Pottytraining Education…. For Us

This really sucks. I knew it was going to suck, and it really truly does. I decided after such a horrible non-start this past weekend that we needed to get serious about this. I absolutely HATE flying blind. So off to Barnes and Nobles we went. I found a great book, Toilet Training Without Tantrums.

Toilet Training Without TantrumsBefore I tell you about this book, I have to digress just a little. My mother is responsible for my love of history, geneaology and all things “old.” 🙂 That being said she has been known to go on and on, and on, and on, and on about how the older generations did everything right, and the current world as we know it is full of a bunch of stupid people. (LOVE YOU MOM!!)

Ok, back to the book. So Toilet Training Without Tantrums is written by John Rosemond. Given what I have just mentioned above this is the perfect book for me, and apparently my mother. Not surprisingly she knew exactly who he was. Ironically, she and my step-dad used to read his newspaper column and used his advice when raising my sister and I.

The Method

John Rosemond “advises an old-fashioned approach to toilet training that would have earned Grandma’s stamp of approval.” He makes some pretty good points, one being that modern parenting “experts” have taken what used to be a simple, albeit time consuming, parenting right of passage and complicated the crap out of it. That’s my paraphrasing, LOL, and pun intended!

He has a method that he coined, Naked and $75, that is pretty intensive but seemingly affective. In a nutshell, it is a simple method, as he says it should be, that basically entails staying close to home for the first week and keeping your child naked, lightweight underwear for boys to contain the firehose effect is allowed. In theory the more your child pee’s all over your house and him/herself the more likely they will want to learn to use the potty. Diapers are crutches, the child needs to want to stay dry and clean. (Edited to add: This did NOT work for us. We are a pullups family now. I still believe that naked training is the way to go, but pullups are still a necessary part of this training for us.) Oh and the $75?? That’s to clean your carpets once you are through the first stage. LOL

It’s a pretty extreme method even in its simplicity. I can say, having spent the majority of our first day using this method that it does require a lot of work and can be quite taxing. He also says to basically throw out all diapers, get rid of the changing table etc. Take away all crutches. Wow, if you ask me that’s pretty extreme.

So I am kind of loosely following John Rosemond’s method. And I am going to blog about the experience here for you. I would like to reiterate that I am not strictly following this method. I think we always have to evaluate what works best for our situation. I think being 32 weeks pregnant this method might push me too far. So I will probably cut a few corners, it might make it take a little longer, but I need my sanity….

Once this first week is over I will make a static page that has all the pottytraining posts in one place. I hope that this will help someone some day. I definitely will make mistakes along the way, in fact I already have! Regardless of how helpful it is, I am positive it will be entertaining. 🙂

PS. No one has asked me to write this nor am I affiliated with John Rosemond in any way. I simply found his book at Barnes and Nobles. There are affiliate links included above, any proceeds will go towards the cleaning of my carpets.

Follow Our Pottytraining Adventures

Adventures in Pottytraining
Pottytraining Education…. For Us
Day 1: Pottytraining Has A Steep Learning Curve
Potty Training Day 2: Boys Are More “Complicated” Than Girls
Update: Pregnancy and Pottytraining Do NOT Mix