We found out in November of last year that we would be expecting our second little one the following summer in July. That gave us a little kick in the butt thinking do we want two kids in diapers? No are you kidding those things are expensive!! So it was at that time we decided to dive in head first. We went online and got a little potty. We decided against the fancy talking, singing toilets as we thought for our son it would be more of a distraction than help and went with a blue simple Baby Bjorn toilet.
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| Amazon |
Let me tell you....we started out with the good old bribe "If you go potty in the toilet you can have an M&M." For about a week it was going well and we had minimal accidents but as the M&M's got boring we switched to marshmallows, Hershey's squares and so on. Pretty soon by the end of the day all we had was a hyper 2 year old that was struggling to feel like it was worth a piece of candy to take time away from playing to go potty in the toilet. We started having more and more accidents and rebelling against the whole idea of even making it into the bathroom to have an accident on the floor. So at about 2 weeks into the attempt to potty train, mommy & daddy were frustrated and so was their 2 year old. One tip I have in this situation....it is better to take a break at this point then keep pushing while frustrated and putting to much pressure will send an in the beginning willing 2 year old to a rub it in your face " I will pee on the floor just because" spiral. So after that 2 weeks we told our son, "if you are not ready to go potty in the toilet that's ok." So back on went the diapers and we didn't talk about it again.
Well a few weeks went by Christmas came and went and we continued to change diapers. Pretty soon it was the beginning of a new year and we noticed that every time our son was about to "go" in his diaper he was announcing it to us. Telling us he needed to go before he would go in his diaper.
At this point my mom said...if he was telling us he might be "ready."
So I decided on a different approach this time around some advice from my mom. I went out and bought some poster board, some colorful permanent markers and stickers. So I went to work...making a sticker chart. It was broken into weeks all the way up to 7 weeks. My husband went out to the store and purchased inexpensive items that he knew our son would like such as...hot wheels cars, ring pops and 1 big item a motorcycle that had lights and sound. We made sure we had plenty of extra underwear and pull-ups for at night.
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| 1 sticker = 1 successful potty in the toilet 10 stickers= 1 prize out of prize box The Life of a Skinny Wrapping Football loving mommy |
Then we had a little talk with our son about a really cool sticker chart (he loves stickers) and we asked him if he wanted to try and go potty in the toilet again so he could put stickers on his chart. He was way more excited then I thought he would be and was ready right then and there. So we explained to him that every time he went potty in the toilet he got to put a small sticker on his chart. After 10 small stickers he got to pick out a prize out of our prize box we made with all of his favorite things. We then talked about "poo-poo" and if he went "poo-poo" in the toilet he got to just have the "big prize."
So as you can see from our chart he loved the idea and started going potty in the toilet like a champ the first week with very minimal accidents. We kept track of accidents with an "X" just to keep track of improvement as time went on. Accidents were ok we did not take away any stickers for accidents as not being able to put a sticker on the chart was enough for him. After every successful potty trip he would be so excited to put the sticker on and we would count how many stickers he had and how many more he needed to get a "prize." Let me just tell you if I would have known how well this worked for him I would have taken this approach to begin with. It relieved so much stress for mommy and daddy all we had to say is maybe next time you will make it to the potty and get a sticker when he would have an accident. He would just accept it move on and you better believe he would make it next time. After the first week he knew the routine and was pretty much all in and for the most part "potty" trained.
"Poo-Poo"
So little did we expect that the "poo-poo" in the toilet would come as easy as the "potty." Let me tell you that first week he did make it to the poop in the toilet ( he really wanted that big prize-motorcycle) and he did receive it! We also had a decent amount of pairs of dirty underwear that first week. By the second week he pretty much had the potty thing under control and our prize box was low. As the second week went on we started having little to none potty accidents and the "poo-poo" accidents started happening less and less and we decided that now that he understood the concept...the "poo-poo" was getting switched to being worth 1 big sticker which counted as 2. He continued to do well and maybe we are just lucky but by the end of the second week we had a pretty much potty and poo-poo trained little boy.
"Night time"
Now this section is going to be short where as this subject I do not have any helpful pointers. We began right away from week one putting pull-ups on him during the night. Now the lucky thing for us is after the first week of potty training all day and having maybe three wet pull-ups in the mornings, he just started holding it all night long on his own and waking us up in the morning saying he had to go. We did always have him try to go before bed but I think here we just got "lucky" that our son has a bladder of steel. Night time potty training just happened on it's own for us.
We now have a completely potty trained little boy for going on about five months and for us it only took roughly 3 weeks. As far as what I have learned from our potty training experience the key is:
1) Patience for the parents (if your not ready they will sense it, no need to get mad they will rebel)
2) The child is somewhat ready. (Understands when they have to go)
3) Finding the way your child responds best (sticker chart with rewards etc.)
I hope this approach helps some of the other parents out there and just remember it WILL happen :)
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