These people are full of it. Just like those women who say that co-sleeping is 100% relaxing and allows them to feel fully rested from the time their child leaves the womb. Just like those women who claim that after one night of allowing their baby to cry it out, their child slept perfectly for twelve straight hours every night until they went off to college. If these people are not liars, they must have those ever elusive "easy children" that I've never actually seen in real life. Thankfully, I have honest friends who've successfully potty trained their kids already, and they encouraged me and laughed with me when I got very frustrated. Since they're all stay at home moms, though, figuring out how to manage this milestone across the home and day care environments took some extra creativity and flexibility. In case anyone is interested in our potty training trials, I thought I'd pass along some of the most useful things I figured out over the course of the process in case they help others down the line.
- You'll know when you and your child are ready to attempt this task. Thankfully, you've already become an expert at politely dismissing unsolicited advice by this point in your child's life. Because if you think your child's ready at 23 months a lot of people will tell you it's "too soon."
- Talk to your day care providers in advance to get a sense of how much they'll be willing to cooperate and support the process. I was lucky in this regard because Nora's teachers are fantastic. Her main teacher was super excited for her, proud of her when she showed up in undies after the three days of training at home, has never complained once about having to clean up after an accident, and has even encouraged me about what a great job I'm doing.
- The three day naked boot camp method IS a great way to start. Here are my additions to the tips you can find elsewhere for how to prepare for these three days:
- Ask yourself: what clothes will I want to be wearing when I'm getting peed on repeatedly? And then make sure you have a whole stack of those clothes clean. (For me, this was yoga pants and t-shirts.)
- Make sure you have plenty of alcohol in the house. That way, when you survive each day (especially that first one) of being cooped up inside with a peeing machine, you can reward yourself with a little big of liquid relaxation. And if you need a drink even before bedtime, I won't judge you.
- Look for little signs of improvement from each day to the next rather than comparing your child's progress to anything you read online. My friends told me to stick with it as long as I felt like Nora was moving forward instead of rejecting the process. I'm so glad they did. They told me that after about a week, I'd be surprised at how far she'd come. They were right.
- Think about what "treat" will incentivize your child without sabotaging your attempts to feed her a healthy diet. We settled on fruit snacks because Nora is manipulative. Once she figured out that she was going to get a treat for going on the potty, she started squirting out one drop at a time and demanding a treat.
- If you're like me, you might think the way to avoid accidents is to ask your child to pee on the potty really frequently. This might work for some kids, but I realized on day three that I was asking Nora to do it so much that she was a) getting annoyed with me and b) not really able to feel when she had to go without being told. I decided she would ultimately learn faster if I wasn't so committed to preventing accidents, and I think that worked out according to my plan.
- When your child goes back to day care, consider using thin underwear under pull-ups. The people who use the three day method sometimes act like you will fully sabotage your training if your child ever sees a diaper again, and they swear pull ups are evil. But on the other hand, no matter how supportive your child's teachers are, sanitation concerns prevent them from allowing your kid to pee in puddles all over the classroom. Our teachers were immediately on board with putting Nora's undies under her pull up, which I figured would keep things sanitary while also making sure Nora could feel the wetness when she had an accident. Once she stopped having large accidents, they just stopped using the pull ups and switched to the thick undies.
- We like the thick training undies since we never knew when Nora might tinkle a little bit before she realized she was going. The ones Gerber makes are better than the store brand from Babies-r-Us, which have stretched out an unfortunate amount. We didn't use the plastic pants that go over these because even with Nora's nice thick thighs, they seemed really gappy. I figured the pee would just run right down her leg.
- Expect your child's progress at day care to lag behind her progress at home. Nora stopped having pee accidents in the house after about a week, aside from the occasional rare one. It took several more weeks before she stopped having regular pee accidents at school. It took her longer to stop having poop accidents at home, and that improvement has taken longer to take hold at school, too.
- Think about getting a travel potty. This is something I would have thought was unnecessary, but Billy's cousin Jacelyn gave us this one for Nora's birthday and it has been really nice to have in the car. The bags are kind of expensive, but we use them so rarely that the 30 pack I bought will probably last as long as we need them. The travel potty's real function is to eliminate that underlying anxiety you'll have about traveling in the car with a potty training child-- and since I drive Nora to and from day care every day, this has taken a big weight off my mind.
- While I'm recommending potties, you don't need an expensive or fancy one. We bought this froggy potty, and then I promptly bought another so we can have one in the living room on the main leve and one in the upstairs bathroom. (Again: is two necessary? No. Is it worth the extra $10? For me, definitely-- especially since we saved a lot of money on diapers by potty training early.)
I think that's about it. We're still using diapers at naptime and overnight, though I think Nora will be ready to do away with those fairly soon. Like everything else, we figured it would be better to do this one step at a time rather than trying to force it on her all at once. And aside from those first three days, which nearly drove me crazy because I had unreasonable expectations and because I hate being cooped up in the house, the whole process has been relatively painless. And like everything else about parenting since Nora was about five months old, the joys of the process have far outweighed the frustrations. It is so delightful to see how excited she gets about peeing and pooping in the potty. She likes to please, but really, I think the real effect of the praise is that it makes her feel like going in the potty is something she deserves to take pride in. I'll wrap this up with a few pictures that prove this point.
This is us posing for a picture to send Dad on the third day of bottomless boot camp. She wanted to show him the treat she had earned for going in the potty.
And this is her on her birthday, immediately after telling our photographer, Ena, that she had just gone peepee on the potty.
I never get tired of seeing that proud look on her face. And I never think "You know, I wish I'd changed more diapers today." So if I can offer one last piece of advice, it's to start the potty training process when you think you're both ready rather than putting it off out of fear about how it will go. If we hadn't done it fairly early, we'd not only still be changing diapers-- we'd be missing out on all the great comments she makes about it, too. Like last week, when she shouted from the bathroom, "MOMMY! Poopies look like broccolis! But I can't eat em!" or like each morning, when she tells me excitedly "I need undies LIKE YOU!"
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