Potty Training a 2 Year Old
If you have learned anything from me its that I don’t know what I’m doing and neither do you. So here goes, potty training. Oh God help us all … The only positive is that I have wet bags from my daughters cloth diapers. My suggestion so that your entire house doesn’t smell like urine is to buy wet bags, even if you aren’t doing any kind of cloth diapering thing. You can take the soiled clothes throw them in these bags and wash them in an hour or three days without the house and all the other clothes smelling bad. I got a small one at Walmart for 5 bucks and 2 medium size ones (slightly poorer quality) for $15 on amazon.
Your son or daughter is probably ready to give potty training a try if he or she does I’m going to say any of the following…
- Hides to poop
- Can tell you after the fact that he or she peed
- Is interested in watching you go to the bathroom (kind of like when you started solids
If you are going to give this a try you are going to need about 30 pairs of underwear and at least 15 pairs of pants / shorts.
Also, and I repeat ALSO … do not read the posts and or websites that claim that their kid was potty trained in 3 days .. I’m calling bullshit. Send me hate mail I dare you, no way was your kid fully potty trained in that amount of time, unless of course they were 5 when you took them out of diapers in which case you cheated.
If you are a working mom and your kid goes to daycare or you have a sitter you are also going to need to clear what you are doing with them. Your kid cannot be in diapers for part of the day and underwear for the other part. Well, I guess they can, but you are sabotaging your own effort and the effort of your child, not that this is the worst thing in the world, but the overall process is going to take longer. Some daycares are great like mine and are basically working through this initial transition period with me. Other daycares want the child to be able to tell them that they have to go to bathroom before they will deal with the potty training thing and further still other daycares, do not potty train. You need to have your childcare situation worked out before you start this process. For some that could mean taking a weeks vacation to do this. Crazy I know, but it depends on what the people who are watching your kid for 40 hours a week are willing to do. My daycare is fantastic and as I said working with me on this one, plus my son has a friend who is the cutest thing in the world and the two of them are potty training together. They are each actually providing each other motivation which is why we have started this early. My son is willing to do it at 2 (as of this past March) other kids may not be ready yet.
I don’t really buy the boys aren’t ready till their older thing. I don’t have any hard evidence other than the fact the his friend at daycare is about 3 months older than my son and both seem to be getting the grasp of it.
Once you have the underwear and extra pairs of pants, managed the childcare situation you are ready to take the plunge. Here goes … are you ready??? Take off the diaper, its like a bandaid, you just have to do it. Once you have done it, wait for little Johnny or Suzie to pee on something … probably your couch .. I’m serious. Just wait, its going to happy probably within the first hour.
Once it happens, explain to the child what happened, bring them into change their pants and clean up the urine. I might even bring them directly in the bathroom before you change them just so they hopefully start to make that correlation.
From that point on, limit the liquids and set the timer, for 45 min to an hr. You will learn your childs bathroom routines pretty quickly. If after an hour they haven’t gone, set the timer for 30 minutes if after 30 minutes they haven’t gone set the timer for 15. The biggest challenge you will have initially is getting them to be able to sit on the toilet long enough to catch them peeing. Seriously, that’s the trick, give them a book, an ipad, sing a bathroom potty song, whatever it takes, but you have to get them to sit there until they pee. Eventually they will learn what it feel like to make yourself go pee and they will be able to do it the minute they sit down but for the first couple of weeks, you just have to catch them peeing. Hence the timer …
Once you can get them to pee on command so to speak the next step is getting them to tell you before they pee that they have to pee. I have not gotten to this step in the process so I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
My son at this point can pee when he is put on the toilet without the aid of the ipad which was what we needed for about a week (it took me another week to figure the ipad trick out). He does get M&M’s when he pees on the potty, we also do high fives and he get to flush the toilet, its basically a party 3 – 4 times a day at my house. I’m pretty good about putting him on the toilet every hour, sometimes I push it because I’m doing something else and that’s usually when there is an accident. The accidents I would say 75% of the time are my fault, I knew I was pushing it and did it anyway. I don’t chastise or scold him, I simply point out what happened and change him into dry clothes. He will sometimes get upset, he always wants to pee on the potty right after he’s had an accident. He’ll get there and so will I, it is a process and one that requires dedication. I am excited for no more diapers though … at least not on two kids.
My son at this point can pee when he is put on the toilet without the aid of the ipad which was what we needed for about a week (it took me another week to figure the ipad trick out). He does get M&M’s when he pees on the potty, we also do high fives and he get to flush the toilet, its basically a party 3 – 4 times a day at my house. I’m pretty good about putting him on the toilet every hour, sometimes I push it because I’m doing something else and that’s usually when there is an accident. The accidents I would say 75% of the time are my fault, I knew I was pushing it and did it anyway. I don’t chastise or scold him, I simply point out what happened and change him into dry clothes. He will sometimes get upset, he always wants to pee on the potty right after he’s had an accident. He’ll get there and so will I, it is a process and one that requires dedication. I am excited for no more diapers though … at least not on two kids.
