So, potty training.
It’s one of those motherhood milestones. You know the ones.
The ones we spend hours thinking, worrying, researching and reading about. We ask three friends what worked for them, we look at every kid who might be remotely the same age as ours to see if they’re still wearing diapers, and we google ‘kids who reject potty training’ because there’s a few months there where we’re genuinely concerned we might have the only high-schooler still in diapers.
And you guys KNOW I love a good plan. In fact, before we started potty training, I was sure I was going to be the person who read like ten different methodologies, plotted out a well-researched approach, and stuck with it to the letter.
Our Real Potty Scoop
But you know what? Here’s how it really went down for us:
The summer that Em was two-and-a-half I was sure we were going to potty train him. I mean, we planned to spend the whole summer up at the lake, we’d be outside (where accidents don’t seem quite so disastrous), and I’d even have extra grandparent hands to help with Charlie.
And we did try that summer. Kind of. I mean, we had a few successful days where Em was happy enough to pee in the potty. We mostly stuck to our plan of no diapers, but we also had a lot of fun. Which meant we got distracted a lot. And frankly Emmett seemed waaaay more interested in learning to jump off the dock and swim around than he was about the dang potty. So, we made a little progress. But ultimately, he was still in pull ups. And honestly? I didn’t really mind. The summer was fabulous.
And then we got back home in September. Back to school, back to routine, and back to pooping the bed.
Like not just pooping the pull-ups guys, but actually the ENTIRE bed. There was a week there where I stripped the mattress cover, sheets, animals and blankets from his bed and wiped down the bars of his crib THREE separate times.
And that was it. That was the straw that broke the diaper’s back. I was done.
That night I set up alarms on my phone for the next day in 15 minute increments. When Emmett woke up, I told him we were done with diapers because he was a big boy, and that I was so excited to work with him on potty adventures!
We sat on the potty every fifteen minutes that day (and for about the next week) and we celebrated with a Smartie every time he had a pee or a poop.
We followed zero prescriptive methodologies. I just built a schedule I thought would work for him and went with it. It probably took about a week for him to get it (we stretched the time increments out a little bit every day), and if I’m being honest it probably took about a month or two before he was consistently telling me that he had to go, instead of having me remind him (oh and he still wears a diaper at night, but it’s usually dry).
What Made Our Potty Training Difference?
And you know what really and truly made the difference?
I was ready.
When it came down to it, it had way more to do with me being ready than it did Emmett being ready. Sure, he needed to have met some key developmental milestones for it to be possible, but once I knew he could physically control his bladder and could comprehend what was happening in his body, it was all me.
Nobody told me that it was me who was going to need to make a big change. I mean, I needed to rethink our entire day. Our routine, our schedule, our lifestyle needed to move from diaper-centric mode to a potty-centric mode (at least in the interim). And it was me who needed to be ready to take on that change. Once I was ready to take it on, and put a plan together, he just happily went along with the process!
So guys, that’s my takeaway here. And it’s what nobody told me: It’s you that needs to be ready for potty training. There’s absolutely no magic timeline (other than physiological milestones) for when potty training will work for your child. But I can tell you that it’s only going to work if you’re 100% ready to take it on, (and if you’re ready to embrace the interim chaos).
My advice? Wait until you’re ready. Find the time that works best for you, when you have the patience and time to commit, because it’s a big change and you’re the one who will feel it the most. Or you know… wait until your son’s poop literally explodes all over your house and you lose your dang mind and throw out all the diapers.
Either way. This potty training thing? I promise. It’s really all about you.
