5 Easy Steps to Stress Free Pottytraining

5EasyStepstoStressFreePottytraining

Here are 5 quick and easy steps to make potty training stress free!

I have been potty training the same kid off and on for a year and a half!

Wait, don’t run away!

You might be wondering why on earth you would want advice from someone who has taken so long to potty train their kid.

There are those people who have trained their kid in less than a week. One of two things probably happened in that situation, either A) that kid trained themselves and the parent deserves zero credit or B) the parent has the patience of Mother Theresa and the discipline and motivation of, well, someone really disciplined and motivated.

Now if you have amazing discipline and patience and are determined to train your kid in a matter of days then you should go check out Sarah from Nurse Loves Farmer. She rocks and will have great tips for you!

If you’re still with me then you want your kid to wipe their own butt but you aren’t really sure you have what it takes. Don’t you worry, I would say you are in the majority!

Potty training sucks. You have to be on your game all day, everyday. Unlike situation A above, 99.9% of kids will not take the initiative, at least not when you want them to. All of those 3 day training method moms are awesome and deserve our utmost respect. However, I will be the first to tell you, I am not one of them!!! Those manuals are right that it only takes 3 days of 100% effort, attention and consistency and then Bamm! they get it. I don’t know about you, but in the last year and a half I have not found three days where I had that kind of energy! I was too busy being pregnant, having a newborn, breastfeeding an infant (which I have done sitting on a stool in the bathroom trying to coax the older one to poop in the potty) to be able to make it through even a full day! That’s all my fault, I know that. But I also know that I’m not alone. I know there are many more of you out there that just can’t figure it out.

So here are 5 quick and easy steps to make potty training your kid a little less stressful.

  1. Wear underwear under pull ups!  No muss no fuss! They feel VERY wet when they go but you aren’t left with a huge mess. It will generally wet their clothing, but that’s way better than your carpet or the freezer aisle in the grocery store! There are those times when shit happens, but if it doesn’t cleanly fall off into a toilet those things are going in the trash!
  2. Get the books, movies and games! Check out your local library and get as many potty training books as you can. Once you’ve exhausted their supply look into interlibrary loans. We also have the board game Let’s Potty and Noah loves it. This is like subliminal messaging, except with toddlers you have to be a little more obvious.
    I had to have a book, It Hurts When I Poop, transferred for Noah. You can imagine how that conversation went.
    Me: I need to have a book transferred from another library.
    Librarian: Whats the title?
    Me: It Hurts When I Poop, its not for me, its for my son, I swear.
  3. Sit on the seat backwards. This is mostly for boy moms, but in the beginning the pee pee tends to go everywhere but in the toilet, ESPECIALLY when they are sitting down. First, keep them sitting as long as you can. Second, turn them around. It keeps things pointing in the right direction, down. Also, just a little extra info, NEVER kneel in front of your son while he’s on the potty. I had to learn that the hard way, in the bathroom stall at a restaurant!!
  4. Keep them on the potty! Books, stickers, dry erase crayons (for when they are sitting backwards), iPhones, iPads, whatever it takes, keep their little tushies on that potty as often as possible for as long as it takes!
  5. Learn this phrase, “Let’s just sit on the potty and see what happens, its OK if you don’t go pee pee or poo poo, just sit on the potty.” Here’s the most important part, YOU HAVE TO MEAN IT!!! Try not to pressure your child, unless you can keep that pressure consistent for AT LEAST three days or you are wasting your time. Toddles are control freaks, yet the only thing they can control is what goes in and comes out of their bodies. You can’t force them to eat and you can’t force them to poop. The sooner you make your peace with that the better off everyone will be. Unless you can outlast them, it takes about three days to break a toddler. Every time I have entered this battle with my son I am ALWAYS  the one who blinks first, but that’s generally because I’ve been poked in the eye with a drum stick or flying Lego. 😉

Good luck on your potty training journey and if you have any questions I am always available on twitter or you can leave a comment here or any of the posts in Adventures in Pottytraining.