How to potty train your child?

“How do you potty train your kids?” asked my friends. Since this topic is quite popular among some of my friends thus I guess it will be nice to share my own experience. 

Some important tips:

• Every kid is different 

• More haste, less speed 

• Observe your child’s readiness 

• Make it fun

• Let’s go toilet together

Every kid is different. The rumour says that girls potty trained earlier than boys. Does it apply to all girls? I don’t think so. My girl was only able to ditch the diapers totally when she was 5 years old but my boy was diaper free when he was just barely 4. So, it really depends on your child’s personality and readiness.

More haste, less speed. I remembered the stress I had when my girl’s preschool teacher said that most of her classmates were toilet trained and my girl was the last two who were yet to. I discussed with the teachers that Claire was not ready yet because she was a year-end born baby. But the stress from school and family “how come your girl is not diaper-free yet?” were lingering and thus I decided to potty her earlier even though she was not really yet. Consequences? Lots of peeing incident, change of bedsheets, and sadly cries. :( After two weeks, I decided to stop and try after a month later thinking of how should I make this better.

Observe your child’s readiness. How do you know your child is ready to attempt this new milestone? 

• Their diapers are dry or very less pee during their awake time. It is a super good news If their diaper is also dry during nap time. 
• They want to go toilet with you to pee which means your little ones are interested to know how adults pee in the toilet. Oh yes, if this happen, please really welcome them to observe you peeing in the toilet. My boy became interested when he saw his father did his pee. It became like a mini-sharing session between them on how to aim their pee into the toilet bowl. :p

Make it Fun!

Week 1 and 2:

• Show them books, videos and songs about potty training or how is it like to become a big boy and girl without diapers. There’s quite a number of them online and my favourite videos is: Elmo Potty Time.
• Involve your child in the purchase of his potty. Show them pictures of some of the potty you have selected and let him choose which to buy :)
• Teach him how to pull down their pants and sit on the potty.

Day time Diaper Free Challenge. We had reward charts which rewarded her for totally dry diapers (though sometimes I feel “wah! Waste diaper!” But this is what she is comfortable with”) to train her confidence level. “Yeah! See no pee pee!” I exclaimed. We used the Huggies XL diaper so you can see the pee indicators clearly. Place potty at the living room so she is able to access it easily.

If your child is not diaper free during awake time, then it may take a few weeks to train that first.

Week 3 - 5:

Nap/Night time Diaper Free Challenge. When your child is totally diaper free during awake time excluding naps. It is time to observe his readiness during sleeping time. Is there pee on his diaper? Or no pee at all? If so, your child is ready. Yeah!

Try naps first because it is shorter sleep time and achievable milestones to build confidence before transition to night time challenge.

Do the same thing that you did for the day time challenge with potty inside the bedroom. Provide a sensor nightlight which will brighten when they go to their potty or have a portable kids nightlight so they can hold it to go to the potty (especially if their bedroom is dark).

Please be patient and expected pee accidents. Encourage your child and tell them is ok and continue to try. If persistent accidents happen, it means your child needs to a break from this training (maybe you too!) and try it maybe a week later.

Let’s go toilet together!

This may seem weird for first time parents but seeing is doing. Let your child see you pee and even poo. They will learn what are good habits and what to do in the toilet. Don’t be shy :p

Lastly, the stress and lack of child’s readiness prolong training. Just remember that your child ultimately will be potty ready or train. Breathe and relax. This is really true after I tried the above steps for my younger child. He was totally diaper free a few days before he is 4 years old. 

All the best :)

Deariebear Mommie