Since last week’s children’s TV show flow chart went over so well, I decided to make another for potty training.
I think it’s fairly obvious where I stand on this matter. But if not, you can check out my post called “No, My Daughter Is Not Potty Trained, Thanks for Asking”.
To be honest, none of the things above have happened to me because we haven’t made a real attempt. Mazzy’s made it clear she’s not interested and the only reason to force to the issue, as far as I can see, is to impress family and friends.
Plus, a friend’s dog pissed on my couch once and it took a long time for my husband to convince me we didn’t need to buy a new one.
What about you? Got any nightmarish potty training stories you’d like to share? Or, care to make us all jealous with a shit-free tale of toilet-training ease?
————————–
If you liked this post, follow Mommy Shorts on Facebook. Want Mommy Shorts delivered daily or weekly to your inbox?
I like this, and I’m in your camp, but I can think of a few tweaks:
1. The readiness of the kid/parent might be a little conflated. Because even if my daughter is 100 % ready, as satisfied with the first question, I might not be (No might about it, I’m NOT ready).
2. I’m pretty sure juicy poop on the carpet is way worse than pee on the couch. Maybe this is debatable.
I was okay with pee on the couch – I was NOT ready for poop fingerpainting on the walls. NOTE: No matter how boring it is to perch on the edge of the tub while your ass goes numb and cheer for someone while they sit on a toilet, DO NOT get up and leave the room. You will be sorry.
I am SO NOT ready for this.
Well my daughter potty trained in one day. She was 3.5 years old on that day.
Seriously hold off until you feel like it’s the right time. Pushing the subject any earlier is just asking for trouble. She was dry day and night on the very first day, whereas I’ve had friends who had their kids trained for the day at 2 and still in night time diapers at 5. Those bragging rights are not worth that.
My second is a boy. He can potty train when he’s old enough to figure it out without my help.
i feel i must share this story. this passed weekend my nephew who is 4 and is potty trained, who lives in the country, decided to pee outside in the yard, not a big deal, but then after peeing turned around and shit flew out of his ass. according to his mom, he has never done that before….so last night after my son, who is 3, spent the weekend with said nephew, instead of going to the potty that was 5 feet away, he goes outside and starts pissing in the FRONT yard, we live in the city. small yard and close neighbors. see what humor you are going to miss not having a boy!!!
With my daughter (my first child), I was gung ho about potty training…because I didn’t know any better. With my twin boys, they told me they wanted to use the potty, and I told them no. BTW, everyone says don’t do that. I put it off as long as possible, and it has been a much better experience. Wait until they are beyond ready is all I can say.
I am in the same boat with Sylvia, she is showing no interest and she will be three in October. My mother constantly hounds me to get her potty trained. She will sit on the potty to avoid bedtime, she reads on the potty, and will do anything other than go to the potty. I am going to wait until she shows the signs of interest as well. I too read the article you talked about in your post on Babble and found it fascinating that early training can do more harm than good. I’m glad you posted bc I know I’m not alone!!
Lil’ Bit’s not ready, either. We thought she was at one point, but then she wasn’t. There was an unfortunate pee-pee incident during that time in big-girl underwear. To be honest, the look of shock and panic on her face when that happened bothered me more than having to clean up a puddle of piss from my hardwood floors.
So, she’s not ready and I’m OK with that. She’s only 2-1/2 and has still got plenty of time. Like you said, the only reason to force the issue is to be able to tell friends and family, “She’s potty trained!” And frankly, my sanity is worth more to me than bragging rights.
And also, I tend to believe that forcing the issue will only backfire in the long run.
My son was easy…bribery means everything to him! Lol At roughly 2 1/2 he decided he wanted a “big water shoo’in gun” so we told him he could have one if he wore underwear for a week with no accidents. By Saturday he had his gun and we were out of diapers! Thankfully he never has daytime accidents and has only had a handful of night time accidents in the year since potty training (which he treats as the END of the world!). I fear our next one will NOT be that easy!!
We left it up to our little one to decide when she was ready. She would pee on the potty before bedtime and a few times a day but always wanted her diapers. Then one day, at a little over 2 and a half, she decided she was done… A few accidents here or there but easier to deal with without carpets! Still not dry at night every night but we’re getting there. It really is up to them.
I’m somewhere in the middle currently – my son is 18 months old and poops on the potty. He tells me “I poop,” I sit him on the potty (the big one with a seat so he can’t get up and walk away) and I give him some privacy (aka I stand with my back to him at the door) he grunts, makes his deposit, exclaims “Euuuww!!!”, flushes and goes on his way.
In no way has he shown interest in peeing on the potty nor am I going to worry about it until he’s much older. I’m just counting my blessings and doing a little happy dance that I don’t have to clean up any more shitty diapers!!! (Unless he goes at night or during naptime – which is rare so WHATEVER!)
_________________________________________
Here’s my epic twin potty training fail from last week:
So, I’m letting both kids be naked in the house. (I know, I know…) Anyway, we’re working on potty training, so I thought I’d just try it out. I’m sitting on the recliner, when Kylie walks up and assumes the “I’m pooping” position. I get a little whiff & I was thinking, Oh no you don’t!!! I gave her the choice – You can poop in a diaper or you can poop on the potty. She wasn’t having either. So, I proceeded to get her into a diaper while she was throwing a full-on tantrum. After I got the diaper on & was helping her calm down, I notice Ben coming down the stairs. As I’m looking closer, I notice something on his leg. Eeeeeeeeeeek! So I jump up, run over, and sure enough, it is POOP. I say (very loudly, I’m sure), Ben, where is your poop??? He starts running toward the bathroom. Of course, by now, Rowan has joined in the hunt for Ben’s poop, so he’s behind me yelling, “Ben, where is your poop???” We get to the bathroom and yes, there is a smear of poop on Ben’s little potty, but not the whole amount. I’m frantically looking around the floor, trying to find the poop and getting totally grossed out, knowing I’m going to step in it. I look at Ben, and repeat again, “Ben, where is your poop???” He starts running back toward the living room, runs around to the back of the recliner and points to the HUGE POOP sitting there on the tile (thankfully not the carpet!). So, as I was dealing with Kylie, Ben was RIGHT BEHIND where I was sitting, also pooping.
This experience is when I knew potty training twins was going to be different…
_________________
Virginia
Oops – Ben and Kylie are my almost 2 year-old twins and Rowan is my almost 5 year-old. 🙂
My twins were fairly easy. Sydney was about 2 1/2 and ready. It took a couple of weeks. We thought Nick was ready a couple of months later. We tried the first day in underwear on Good Friday. My husband was staying home with the kids that day. That kid went through 7 pairs of underwear. My poor husband. We decided to put him back in diapers and try again later. Well, the next Monday rolled around and Nick requested underwear. We reluctantly let him wear them. From that day on, he never had another accident.
My son would only tell us when he had to go if he wasn’t wearing underwear. So he’d wear his pants commando. That worked great until his 3rd birthday party. My niece (who was 4 at the time) came over and said, “Aunt Riki – I don’t know what these brown balls are on the floor, but I smelled one and it’s not chocolate.” I about died. I asked if she picked it up and she said that she didn’t want to because it was strange that they were on the floor. I looked in and saw a room full of cousins and poop on the floor. I yanked him up really fast and handed him off to my hubby while I got some grocery bags and lysol spray and cleaned up the mess. He was three. I can’t recall any accidents past that so I guess that’s a good thing.
Oh and man, as a toddler he had fun exploring the contents of his diaper one morning. Baby Tad (his toy frog) was shit-faced. Literally. You know I took a photo. I’m really not going to blog about this I’m pretty sure. It was disgusting. I don’t know why I took photos, I’m demented like that.
I am SO glad that my kid isn’t the only one out there who seems to have no interest in using the potty. I was totally gung-ho about it and convinced myself that I would get her out of diapers before #2 arrives in October, but now I am extremely doubtful. Anna actually started sitting on the potty and making a “pssssss” sound to try to trick me into thinking she was going so she could get a treat! I guess she deserves points for being creative…
I would assume the photos are for a future 16th birthday party or graduation party. It’s only right to have proof of their activities as children 🙂 I have photos of my oldest (3 then, 9 now) after she painted her hands with fingernail polish. Right in front of me.
Ha ha ha
I was lucky. All three of my kids had very few accidents and they were each two when they mastered this concept.
My son was easy…he was (and still is) very motivated by external things (rewards, cheers from us, etc.) so potty training him was pretty straightforward. My daughter, on the other hand, is 2.5 and has no interest in rewards of any kind. She is extremely stubborn and no amount of cajoling will work when it comes to potty training. I know that she will decide when she is ready.
http://themomfessional.com
My 2 year old son gave enough indications of being aware of peeing in his diaper. So I decided to pursue the issues of potty training. Day 3 it’s going ok. My friend whose son is 3 weeks younger than mine sent me this flow chart. As I am reading it, my son says ‘look mom I boo booed.’ Sure enough I whirl around and there was the mother load of squishy poo on the carpet! I’m still laughing.
Our babysitter’s son is a year older than Caitlyn and he’s been potty trained for about 9 months now. Caitlyn took that, at 18 months old, as a sign that she should start taking off her diaper and pissing on my rug (couch, computer chair. You name it, really). I figured this meant she was ready and bought her a potty chair. She lounged on it and used it a stool for months until finally, a few weeks ago she actually peed in it. And then promptly decided that she would prefer to use the big girl toilet. And by use, obviously I mean sit on, wipe and flush without so much as a drop of pee escaping her. She would actually hold her pee until she got off the toilet, then go hide in the refrigerator of her toy kitchen and pee there. Over the course of the last few weeks, she’s used the big girl toilet a couple of times and “used” it at least a hundred more. We are making some sort of progress though. Except with poop. When she poops, she takes her diaper off when I’m not looking and feeds it to the dog. Toddlers are fucking disgusting.
Here are my thoughts. Take ’em or leave ’em but I stand by them 100%.
A child is not truly potty trained until they can:
(1) recognize the urge to void
(2) hold in said urge to pee or poo until they get to a bathroom
(3) hold in said urge to pee or poo until their pants are down and they are sitting on a toilet
(3a) preferably on a REAL toilet because let’s face it – cleaning poo out of potty? Especially soft poo? SO not fun
(4) Preferably be able to wipe themselves, then be able to get down, pull up their underwear/pants, reach a faucet, wash their hands (for the appropriate time including use of soap), dry their hands, and exit the bathroom.
Otherwise (at least for steps 1-3) it is not so much the child that is trained but the parent. AND also for those who “brag” about their kid being trained – yet either have to run to a bathroom the minute their kid says they need to pee or deal with pee everywhere – I am toilet trained. And I have yet to pee in my pants. Unless quite drunk. Since I am assuming these young kids peeing their pants aren’t drunk? They are NOT trained.
Oh and also I need to add in:
(5) which is somewhat related to above re: me not peeing my pants – they need to have a sense of embarrassment if they do pee themselves. Because if they are wearing underwear, soak it, and don’t care but keep playing? Not much motivation to make it to the potty on time eh?
Also:
(6) (which is related to (5) – when a child is truly trained (or ready to be trained?) – no bribes/stickers/smarties etc. required. Just not peeing their pants is all the motivation they need to get to a toilet on time. Trust me. It is fine system to use to broach interest, but to be truly toilet trained no other reward than not peeing/pooping in one’s underwear is needed. Think about it. When you have to go the the bathroom sooooooooooooooo badly and just make it in the nick of time are you like “Yay!!! Now I get a CHOCOLATE BAR!” or are you like “Whew! That was close! I almost peed/pooped in my pants, which would have been SUPER embarrassing!”. ??? Hmmmmmmmmmmm????
And finally – kudos to Ilona (and all other parents) for not making themselves and their kids miserable by pushing it. They truly will not be in diapers at school. They seem so smart at 18 months-2-3, but they are not in grade one for a reason. Toddlers no matter how verbal and “smart” are toddlers and should be treated like toddlers, not like school-aged kids. Different brains, different worlds.
Oh my God, that last line? Was the first time I have EVER at ANYTHING laughed out loud at work!!! Sooooooooooooooooo funny … and sooooooooooooooooooooooooo true!!! LOL!!!!!!!!! (or should I say LLOL as in Literally laughing out loud 😉
I like how your mind works, Melissa!
I am not alone in the Potty training debacle I feel so relieved! Everyone keeps telling me (babysitter the loudest) that she is ready to potty train but I am so not forcing the issue! A lot because I am exhausted just thinking about having to take my daughter to a public restroom and holding her above the toilet because I can’t let her touch the seat 😐 and mostly because I am just not going to force the issue, parenting is exhausting enough without the fight involved with toilet training 🙂
I tried a bit too early with my second and she peed in three sets of underwear before I gave up and decided to wait a month. What a difference a month makes! I kid you not, she was trained in a day…ONE DAY. And I’m not talking about no accidents during the day and then putting a diaper on at night and training on that later. No…she peed in the potty once, figured out that was what she was supposed to do and never looked back (that includes going poop which took my first daughter a good month or two to try – she held it all day until I put a pull-up on her before bed, then she would go…ugh). I put pull-ups on her at night for a month only to throw them away dry every morning as she peed on the toilet.
I can honestly say that potty-training my second was one of the easiest things I have had to do parenthood-wise. Getting her to not scream at the doctor just to get her weighed? That’s a different story.
Right after we moved into a temp apartment, waiting for this house, my then 3 YO son started taking off poopy diapers and swearing them on the carpets (goodbye cleaning deposit) and his younger brother (good bye sanity). Now my younger, 2 YO, son is pulling the same stunt and we are listing next week. I expect a nice long stay in a padded room by the time we sell this joint. And duct tape to keep the damn diaper on.
And on a related note, when my older son (the first poop smearer) was still not potty trained at 4 (though I DID get him to stop smearing poop), a doctor put in her report that *I* had anxiety and wasn’t “trying hard enough to potty train” my son. Garsh, really? Anxiety? Probably because I tried EVERY G-DARN METHOD IN THE BOOKS AND THEN SOME TO GET HIM TO USE A TOILET AND IT WASN’T WORKING!!!!! Remarkably, as soon as I stopped trying, he just did it himself. He has had only 1 accident since he hauled his tush on the toilet 2 months ago. The key for us was to just give him time to figure it out on his own. Lesson learned.
I LOVE your chart. All signs lead to “just wait”! And how did Mazzy tell you she wasn’t interested?! She’s so cute!
Don’t push. Trust me. I started trying to PT my daughter when she was about 2.5, around December. By February she had a bladder infection because if I was going to make her pee in the potty, she was just not going to pee AT.ALL. EVER. The doctor gave us meds and told me to chill the hell out with the potty training. I put her back in diapers and never mentioned it again. On her 3rd birthday (in July 2008) she woke up and informed me that she wanted to wear her undies. She was trained for pee in 1 day and only had 1 accident.
Now, poop took us until November 2008. But, like my mom kept telling me “No one goes to college in diapers!”
Having no flow chart to follow, I started potty training my oldest at 2. I read a million ‘how to’ articles. After trying several methods, I decided it would be best to leave the potty chair in the living room & allow him to run around naked. He consistently used the potty on his own…Until the day I heard him crying, followed by, “Mama, I poop aquadoodle.” I walked into the living room and found my sweet boy, holding an aquadoodle pen, had taken a giant crap right there on his aquadoodle. Needless to say, the aquadoodle went in the trash, and so did my notions of potty training at 2 years old…
Now that he’s been potty trained for 5 years, we find the humor in all of it.
I am totally with you. I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to get my son potty trained – bribes and charts and threats and tears and stress and you know what? When he was ready, he basically trained himself in two days. By the time he did train (and it was pretty late compared to other kids) he was day trained, night trained and doesn’t have accidents when we go out. He was ready with time to spare before starting school and it seriously just wasn’t a big deal.
I am determined not to stress over it with my daughter who just turned 3. I say very nice things about the potty but she can learn to use it when she’s ready – no rush.
I totally needed this chart with JDaniel. I made all the wrong choices.
My family every time say that I am wasting my time here at net, but I know I am getting experience
all the time by reading thes good articles.
[…] firmly believe you can’t and shouldn’t force a kid to potty train, but this is harder to do in practice as the months tick by and kids much younger seem to be using […]
[…] In my next stumble down the rabbit hole of parenting failure, I made a fake (and very loud) phone call to Charlie’s doctor, and essentially threatened Charlie with a visit to his pediatrician if he didn’t poop. An hour had passed by this point. My voice became shriller with each passing minute, and my hold on reality/perspective/sanity became more and more tenuous. WHY WOULDN’T HE JUST POOP?! […]
[…] In my next stumble down the rabbit hole of parenting failure, I made a fake (and very loud) phone call to Charlie’s doctor, and essentially threatened Charlie with a visit to his pediatrician if he didn’t poop. An hour had passed by this point. My voice became shriller with each passing minute, and my hold on reality/perspective/sanity became more and more tenuous. WHY WOULDN’T HE JUST POOP?! […]
[…] In my next stumble down the rabbit hole of parenting failure, I made a fake (and very loud) phone call to Charlie’s doctor, and essentially threatened Charlie with a visit to his pediatrician if he didn’t poop. An hour had passed by this point. My voice became shriller with each passing minute, and my hold on reality/perspective/sanity became more and more tenuous. WHY WOULDN’T HE JUST POOP?! […]
[…] In my next stumble down the rabbit hole of parenting failure, I made a fake (and very loud) phone call to Charlie’s doctor, and essentially threatened Charlie with a visit to his pediatrician if he didn’t poop. An hour had passed by this point. My voice became shriller with each passing minute, and my hold on reality/perspective/sanity became more and more tenuous. WHY WOULDN’T HE JUST POOP?! […]