Fun with toddlers- POTTY TRAINING!

Those of you who also follow us on our FACEBOOK page know that Rachel and I have both been potty training our little ones!

 

I am happy to report a HUGE success for us both!! :)

 

Rachel will post about her method, I'm sure, but thought it would be good to get two perspectives with two different gender kids!

 

First of all, I would like to mention that I tried THREE times before this to potty train Natalie (starting at 18 months--- she is now 2.5)  using a three day method and she simply wasn't ready. So when it came time to do it this time, she caught on really quickly! :) So not sure if it went so smoothly because she had had the prior 'training'.

 

I had been told by Natalie's gymnastics teacher that she is a visual learner, so I knew this time I needed to make this whole potty training business.......visual.

 

So I found this guy online and printed him up three times in different sizes. I posted one on a poster titled "Natalie's BIG GIRL chart!" with a column for Pee-pees and one for Poopies

 

One on a bag of stickers (rewards!)

 

And one on a vase with M&M's (more rewards! what girl isn't motivated by chocolate??)

 

 

Here she is half way through day 1. In the morning, we took away the diapers. I purposely waited until we ran out so I could show her that we didn't have anymore. She saying "oh no! we need to get more at the store!"

 

She definitely put up a huge fuss when I put the "big girl undies" on, and my husband and I questioned if we should even be doing this...... but we pushed on.

 

We put painter's tarps all over our carpet and furniture anticipating the worst! We put a little potty in the room with her and explained to her what needed to happen. "Pee-pees go in the potty" She nodded her head yes that she understood.

 

 

This is the potty we used from Amazon (I've also seen it at BRU)

 

We had two very small accidents that morning. Each time we would calmly reminder her that pee-pees go in the potty and that she needed to let us know when she had to pee. We would change her underwear and shorts and go about our day. After the second accident, I placed her on the potty with my iPhone and set the timer for one minute and told her she could get a reward if she sat there until my phone made a noise.

 

The timer went off and she got a single M&M. This peaked her interest. haha!

 

Then we did again, this time with 2 minutes. This time, she happened to pee. WOO HOO!!! So we took this opportunity to make a BIG deal out of it and show her that she had peed in the potty. She also got to put a sticker of her choice (from the bag with the potty on it) under the pee-pees column and she got two M&M's.

 

From that point, she got it! she would run up to us and say "pee-pees coming!!!!"  Then would proudly put her sticker on the poster and enjoyed her M&M's.

 

This was the end of day 1.

 

I did put her in a pull up, which we called "night time undies" at night as I wasn't quite ready to change the sheets three times during the night. I made sure that she didn't think these were diapers so she would understand NOT to have accidents at night.

 

Day 2

 

She had an accident first thing in the morning and cried saying "oh no!!" so again, we calmly sat her on the potty to finish and explained again to let us know if pee-pees were coming. I had read it is important to give them the control instead of asking all of the time if they have to pee.

 

After this accident, she was home free!

 

Day 3

NO ACCIDENTS!!!

 

We went about a week with no accidents and then we had one small one. I knew she had to pee, but I was trying to give her to space to recognize it. She pushed it too long because she was "still playing"

 

But she has now been about a month accident free now! :) Whew! Now I feel like I can post about it and not jinx it! haha!

 

About a month in, I took away the night time undies. We had some travel coming up and I didn't want her peeing in the bed of a hotel or relative so we just stuck with them. A lot of methods discourage this, but for us, this is what worked. She was waking up dry so I was confident that when we got home it would be smooth sailing..... and it was!!

 

So happy to get this out of the way before baby brother arrives in early October!

 

**NOTE: For some reason, Natalie got that poop goes in the potty before we started the potty training process. She used to tell me "bye!" so I knew she had to go. So one day I took her up to her room with the potty and took off the diaper and closed the door after explaining to her she should sit on the potty and poop.  She did it and loved that it wasn't messy anymore so *luckily* this was the easy part for us.

 

 

Good job to my BIG GIRL, Natalie. <3