Potty Training Update

Ok, Jamie, I know you asked me about this like a month and a half ago. Again, sorry it took so long to follow-up, but if you or anyone else is still interested, I am happy to tell you of our potty training experience. Yes, Adie is potty trained and has been for a few months now. Is she perfect? No, but just about. Almost any accident has occurred because of travel or parents who weren't paying close enough attention. Before I go into details though, I'd just like to put out this disclaimer that I realize every child is different and one method won't work the same for all children, and I believe personality plays a big role in how easy / hard it is. For us, potty training was quite easy this time around, and I am really grateful for that because I know a lot of people have quite the battle over this.

First off, I don't necessarily subscribe to the notion that you need to wait for your child's "readiness" before they can be potty trained. Experts these days have some exhaustive list of all the things your child should be able to do before they can be successfully potty trained, and I am telling you right now, Adie did not meet all of those qualifications. It's also interesting to note that until the advent and mass adoption of the disposable diaper, most children were potty trained around 18 - 24 months. The average age these days hovers around 3 - 3.5 years. Hmmmm. Now, disposable diapers can be huge blessings, and if someone prefers the conveniences of them for 3+ years, more power to them. I don't think it will be completely detrimental to their development or anything. However, I didn't particularly want to keep changing them or paying for them, so I was happy to realize I didn't need to wait for Adie's "readiness" because, frankly, I am sure I'd still be waiting.

I bought Adie a little potty at around 18 months. I let her play with it, and sit on it with her clothes on while I was going to the bathroom. I'd talk to her about it and get her familiar with the concepts. Just before we moved, Adie started to show a lot recognition about having gone #2 (we'll try to keep this as clean as possible) so we built off of that and tried to help her recognize before. We were moving though, so I didn't do a whole lot with it. Shortly after Christmas though, she started wanting to actually try using the potty, and did it successfully a couple of times before she turned 2. I never pressured her and always gave her a choice. I started asking her pretty regularly if she needed to go. Most of the time she'd say no, but sometimes the timing worked out, and this was especially true for #2. That sensation was the easiest for her to recognize.

In order to help her know what the sensation was for #1 though, I put her in cloth diapers and eventually into training pants. That way, when she wet through them, she actually felt it. Disposable diapers and pull-ups are too good at whisking away the wetness so children lose their ability to realize they are peeing. It's not the cleanest thing when you are waiting around to have her pee her pants, but it only took a couple of times in training underpants for her to understand she didn't want to be wet and what it felt like before she was going to wet her pants. For the next couple of weeks, she started telling me more frequently that she needed to go, or she'd go when I asked her. She even started doing this on vacation when I was just planning on using diapers and not worrying about it. We still had misses a couple of times a day, usually, but after a couple of weeks she was pretty consistently trained and would miss maybe once or twice a week.

A couple of other strategies we used were to let her choose her underpants and which potty she wanted to use. I feel like this gave her some control in the process. We have a potty seat for each bathroom in the house. Maybe that's excessive, but it is convenient, and while she was training she was pretty particular about which potty seat she wanted to use on which toilet. Now, she is fine using whatever one is most convenient at the time. We also didn't use any bribing or punishment. I read that in a book. They said to treat it like any other everyday thing, like eating or sleeping, and not make it a big deal either way. I admit, the first time she successfully used the toilet we gave her m&m's because we were so excited, but I decided I didn't want to do it that way. I would just tell her she'd done a good job when she had a success, and tried not to get upset when she had a miss. For Adie, that worked. She never expects anything from going to the bathroom other than to be clean.

The drawback to potty training is traveling. That's where we've had the hardest time, even though it's getting easier. We've done a couple of trips to Utah and that hasn't always been pretty. In fact, on the way up to Utah last month, Adie got scared of using any public restroom (but honestly, who isn't scared of that anyway) because she had a stomach ache and things weren't flowing the way they should, and we were stopping at every public restroom we could, trying to get business taken care of, but she not every stop was successful. The whole week we were traveling she wasn't the happiest about using the toilet. I thought she might regress for a while, but as soon as we returned home, she was back to normal. So, if you are doing a lot of traveling for a period of time, potty training may not be the most convenient thing either.

Ok, I know that was a ton of detail, probably far more than anyone wants, although I doubt many will read this in its entirety. However, there is our potty training experience. Who knows what will happen on the next go-around! Good luck to all those embarking on the adventure. I hope it's not too painful or stressful.