Potty successes come at all times of a child’s life. Here are the best tips I have about it:
- Once you do it, commit! Don’t hee haw about it – just leave the diapers off and get your bleach or carpet stain cleaner (for pets) ready.
- Reinforce your child. Each child’s motivation is different, but find something that you child loves whether it be a jelly bean, M&M, special dance, sticker, or tickles. Potty training is HUGE and should be fun and rewarding.
- Follow his/her lead. If your child shows interest in potty training DO NOT WAIT! There is no such thing as too young to be potty trained. I really believe that parents may overlook their child’s readiness signs or be too scared to start training based on the accidents that are bound to happen.
- Make successes a big deal. They truly are!
Potty training is one of the hardest tasks a parent has to tackle. I feel very lucky that my girls potty trained themselves before the age of two. No really, they did it all. Sure, I let them run around without diapers, but I never forced potty training on either of them. In fact, they were eager to do it and I followed their leads.
My older daughter, Natalie, is three and was potty trained at 22 months. At that point she wore (and still wears) one diaper to bed. Natalie suffered from yeast infection from an early, early age (in hindsight I think some of her rash may have been caused by her egg allergy). The doctor and dermatologists said the best thing for her tushy was to let it air out. So that’s what happened. Yes, there was a lot of pee on the floor at times, but I never overreacted. I simply said “Uh oh, you peed on the floor, let’s clean it up.” And we would get a towel and clean up the mess. Every night before bath time Natalie hopped up on to the potty and would go. Huge celebrations occurred and M&M’s were given.
At her 18 month appointment, Natalie’s pediatrician gave me the advice that I strictly adhered to. He said “Once she is out of diapers, don’t give them back.” With the beauty of the Summer Infant Monitor I was able to watch Natalie at nap time and I could see her take her diaper off. Sigh. That is when I pretended we didn’t have a video monitor and I ignored what I saw. Well, my little pumpkin woke up dry from her naps. So I stopped putting her in diapers and we never looked back. Natalie was completely out of diapers (except for her night time diaper) by 22 months old.
My younger daughter, Alyssa, just turned two. Alyssa had rash after rash after rash. I stopped counting how many times we saw the pediatricians in her office after thirteen. Add to that three dermatologists and you have a parent who truly wanted her child to be potty trained before one year old. I even read up on how people in other countries train their infants to go potty at a young age. My strong willed child wanted nothing to do with that and honestly, it is a LOT of work! I was back to the airing out and cleaning up the carpet stage, getting frustrated that my baby had a rash that no one could figure out.
And then it happened……Alyssa showed interested in going potty on the little potty. Hooray!!!! She wanted to be just like her big sister since the competition is fierce. We started out in undies at home and had a few accidents. Within a week we were venturing out of the house without a diaper. Now diapers are thing of the past! (Well, except that night time diaper).
I tell people that I didn’t potty train my girls, that they did it themselves. Honestly, I didn’t do much. The key things that I did were to give them plenty of opportunities to see and use the potty, reinforce them for going. I did not make a huge deal out of accidents and never gave their diapers back.
The love of finding good diaper deals is still strong. We have 15+ packages of Huggies diapers stockpiled and I am not sure I will be able to give up diaper deals……the hunt is too fun. Currently, I find Rite Aid the best place to get Huggies diapers and I will continue buying my 60 diapers a month from them.
Leandrea is a married mom of two girls, ages 13 and 12, living in Atlanta, GA. She is passionate about helping people save money one coupon at a time. Read more