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| Potty chair and "Pee Bear" |
What you will need:
~Potty Chair with an easy-to-remove pot (the kind that just sits on top, not the kind you have to pull out from behind)
~A variety of snacks (especially salty) and drinks
~Other rewards your child might like (we used stickers)
~A doll that pees (I didn't want to buy one, so I got creative and used a stuffed bear...more on that later)
~8-10 pairs of loose-fitting underwear (at least!)
~Cleaning rags and soapy water to clean up accidents
~Paper and pen to track times and progress
~Lots of patience and maybe treats for yourself as well!
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| Treats and Drinks |
The goal is to get your toddler to completely toilet himself, a process which includes pulling down his pants, sitting on the potty and doing his business, standing up and pulling his pants back on, taking the pot to the toilet and dumping it, flushing the toilet (while still holding the pot in one hand), and putting the pot back on the potty chair. Sounds like too much? Let me tell you that for us, this was the easy part!
The difficult part is getting him to recognize when he has to go and getting himself to the potty on time. The idea is that you dedicate a few complete days to this training, letting nothing else, not even phone calls, interfere. It's better to do this in the summertime so that you can let your toddler run around in only underwear, since dealing with other clothes while learning to pull his pants down and up is difficult.
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| Sticker Rewards marking all the times he successfully went potty! |
What to do:
You start out with several practice runs with the doll, describing everything out loud and getting to the point where the child "teaches" the doll by helping it do all the steps. You "give" the doll a drink, take it to the potty chair, pull down its underwear, make it sit and make sure your child is watching when it pees. You praise the doll for peeing in the potty and give it a treat, which you let your child have, while explaining that he will get a treat when he goes to the potty too. Then you teach him how to take the pot out of the potty chair, walk to the toilet, dump, flush and replace the pot. Guide him carefully through a couple runs, but gradually let him start doing it himself. You will be surprised how quickly they pick up on the whole routine. It is best, if possible, to place the potty chair in a spot that is an easy walk from the toilet, but not too far from the kitchen where you can have easy access to drinks and snacks.
Between potty runs, you constantly ask the question (to the doll in this case) "Are your pants dry?" and after guiding your child's hand to feel what "dry" feels like, the doll (and child) gets a small treat. At one point, you wet the doll's pants with water when your child isn't looking and ask the same question. When your child feels that they are wet, make a big deal about how disappointing this is. Then you quickly take the doll to the potty, pull down pants, sit her down, say "Pee-pee in potty, Doll, not in pants!". Make sure you mention that wet pants don't get a treat. Then change it back to dry pants and do another pants check and give a treat for the dry pants.
After this doll practice, which should take no more than half-an-hour, you can start training your child in the same way. Give lots of juice and do a dry-pants check about every 5 minutes, teaching him to feel his pants and answer "yes". Every 15 minutes or so, do a potty run. In the book they say that the first time you should tell him to go and lead him through the whole process, with your hands gently guiding him in pulling his pants down, etc. But every time after that you should limit your involvement more and more, as well as your direct instructions to go potty. You should get to the point where simply asking if his pants are dry instigates his own independent choice to go to the potty and do everything himself. Give a treat every time he passes the dry-pants inspection and a bigger treat every time he pees in the potty. Eventually, after a couple days, your praise should be enough of a reward and you can stop giving treats every time.
What about accidents? There will be many! Just be mentally prepared for it and ready with cleaning rags and a quick way to clean up like soapy water or a disinfecting spray. The book's method for dealing with accidents is to show disappointment, never anger, and do 10 quick practice runs to the potty without the "dumping the pot in the toilet" part. Start from the accident and then from many different parts of the house so that he grasps the idea that no matter where he is, when he needs to pee, he should quickly go to the potty. Then you teach him to clean up the accident, take off the wet underwear and put it somewhere specific like the bathtub, and put on dry underwear.
That's the idea and after he has successfully gone by himself several times, you can consider your child potty trained. The occasional accidents will still happen and you should continue regularly doing dry-pants inspections for several weeks.
The range of ages that kids potty train is pretty wide, but I would say most often people wait till around 2 and a half years old. For a boy, I started our son pretty young, at 2 years and one month. The honest truth is that since we cloth-diaper (more on that here), I was getting really tired of the big 2-year-old diaper messes, plus the washing for two kids in diapers! So it was more for me, perhaps, although I did believe that he was showing signs of being ready.
I started on a Friday morning and I thought that two whole days of training would be good enough. Our Sundays are pretty full and busy at church, so I planned on having the training completed by then. That was failed assumption #1! After about 5 hours of "training", I literally had tears rolling down my cheeks in frustration! I felt like he wasn't getting it, I was running out of cleaning rags and dry underwear, he didn't have much interest in the reward system and he thought the 10 practice runs after accidents were funny!! It was way past his nap-time and we were all frustrated, including my 5 month-old! So I picked my son up out of yet another puddle on the floor, cleaned him up and put him down for a nap and sent a message to my husband saying I was giving up.
I decided to forget it for the rest of the evening. Next morning, after some encouragement from friends who have done this before, I gave it another try. Now I knew what to expect, I was more prepared for accidents and I even got smart and rolled up the rug in our play area! (Duh!) I decided that if it didn't seem to work, maybe he just wasn't ready and that was OK. We could try again in a few weeks. But lo and behold, it was getting better! I kept a tally on a dry-erase board of accidents vs. successes and the accidents were losing!
The book didn't really adress naps or bedtime with much detail, so I decided to keep his underwear on, but with a disposable diaper over it. That way he still had that underwear feeling, but I didn't have to worry about a wet bed. (I recommend having a plastic cover under the sheets anyway, or if you're like me, plastic garbage backs taped together.) I've used the "safety diaper" idea for church and other outings as well.
After about 3 days of training, even with church and a 5 month-old interrupting the process, our son was doing pretty good! He got all the steps right, from pulling his pants down to replacing the empty pot on the potty chair. But he still wasn't independently choosing to go potty like the book said. It has now been 13 days since we started and he hasn't yet voluntarily gone on his own. He sometimes tells us with words that he has to go, but for the most part, we look for his physical cues and tell him to go potty. He usually whines all the way there, but he still sits down and goes. If he doesn't, that's OK, at least he tried. I still ask him often if his pants are dry and I also constantly ask if he has to go potty. The answer is always "no", but I hope one of these days he will recognize that "yes" he needs to go. We have gone out to many places, mostly with the diaper over the underwear, but we try as much as possible to treat him as if he doesn't have a diaper. We have had to rush off the freeway and find a spot on the side of the road several times when we've heard the words "pee-pee!" from the back seat! When I ventured to the grocery store alone with both kids, I had to interrupt my shopping three times to take him to the restroom, and every time it was a false alarm! Then I realized that "pee-pee" must have been his new word of the day because he wouldn't stop saying it loudly during our whole time in the grocery store! That got lots of chuckles from other shoppers! And one of the times he didn't have the "security diaper" over his underwear, he made a nice puddle on the rug of the doctor's office!
It's been an adventure, but I've seen improvement every day and although it was extremely frustrating at first and for a while it felt like a lot more work than diapers, I'm so glad I didn't give up and kept trying!
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| Now he likes books! |
The doll: Like I mentioned, I didn't want to buy one. So I used one of his bigger stuffed bears. I put a pair of underwear on it and filled one of those infant medicine syringes with water. When it was time for bear to pee in the potty, I would hide the syringe behind the bear and when my son was looking, I'd squirt out the water. I really think he believed it! :)
The snacks: Sometimes you have to think outside the box. I had been using fruit snacks, chex mix, chocolate covered raisins, chips and some lollipops. But the second day, my husband suggested olives. That was a huge hit and a much better incentive for him.
The accidents: I stopped doing 10 practice runs after the accidents and only did a few so that he wouldn't think it was a game. It might work for other kids, but not for mine.
The mess: Everyone with a toddler knows that having them "clean-up" makes a bigger mess! I had him clean up accidents together with me because ultimately my point is for him to learn where to go potty, not to be an expert cleaner! Same thing with dumping the pot in the toilet. The book's point is to get the child to do everything independently so you no longer have to even know or worry about it. Well, at my child's age, walking a pot of pee to the toilet and dumping it often results in a mess. So usually, when he has pulled his pants up, he comes out and we ask him to show us if he peed and then we supervise the rest of the process, as well as wash his hands at the end.
The toys: The book recommends putting away all his toys so he can focus on training. At first I was skeptical...what on earth is he supposed to do?? But the whole process (including accidents) does keep both of you busy enough to not have time for any playing. And it is true that as they learn this, they don't have the ability to interrupt something they are doing in order to recognize they need to go potty. Most accidents have happened when he is really absorbed in playing with one of his toys. Little by little I started introducing a few cars, books and other things. By now he has access to all his toys, but I'm constantly asking if his pants are dry, to remind him to be aware of that. I love hearing his little "Si!" coming from the other side of the house! (We speak to him in Spanish at home.)
The books: For us, it helped having a pile of board books by the potty chair by about the third day, when it wouldn't be a distraction from the training process. Like I mentioned, he usually whines all the way to the potty and I think it's because our first day was so rough that it wasn't at all "fun" to go potty. So after he knew what he was supposed to do on the potty, I used books to get him to sit there long enough to do it. This served a double purpose for me, since he has never had as much interest in books as I wish he did. Now he does! :)
The clothes: I added loose shorts over the underwear by the third day and a t-shirt by the fourth day. Make sure you are constantly running a load in the washer with the wet underwear...or buy way more than 10 pairs!
The praise: Utilize all the important people and even characters in your child's life to praise and motivate him. The first time we were able to show Daddy that he could do it all on his own, our son was so excited that he cheered and clapped for himself when he was done!
The shadow: You will soon learn that you need to be your child's constant shadow. After several accidents, you will learn to watch him closely at all times for several days, learning his cues for when he needs to go potty. In our case, I even had to realize he has night-time cues. He started crying or whining in the middle of the night and I quickly realized he needed to go potty but was subconsciously trying not to go in his pants! (A proud 3 a.m. half-asleep moment!). Now I try to limit the amount of liquid he drinks in the couple hours before bedtime, and usually he will wake up in the early morning with dry pants, go potty with my help, and go back to sleep.
The other things: What about #2? Nothing different. Eventually, on one of the potty times, it will happen and the only different thing to do is wipe, which is something they are already used to with diapers. And what about boys peeing while standing up? We have only done that on the side of the road so far. Everything he has learned already is a lot and I figure I will add the "aiming" talent once he's got this part down. I've been recommended by many people to use cheerios or froot-loops in the toilet for aiming purposes! :)
The disclaimer: At least for us, it didn't work in less than a day. We're on day #13 and we have had a few accidents today still! Some days we've had none, and other days it's like we regress a little, especially after spending time out and about, with other people and other toilets. But I still prefer the progress we have seen thus far over the other methods of trial-and-error that usually go on for months on end! However, I hear it's easier with girls, with kids that are a bit older and when totally uninterrupted during training. My mom used this method on all four of us kids and she said we all learned in one day. She said that even from the first night, I never ever had an accident! Impressive, right? I wish I could take the credit for that, but now I know how much work it takes for the parent!
Well, again sorry for the length, but I hope this is helpful to someone. If you have any other questions about our experience, I would love to answer! Please leave a comment!
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