After almost 8 months of on and off potty training Jack – I can finally say with confidence that our 3.5 year old is potty trained! We can leave the house, go to the park, and overall trust him to tell us when he needs to go number one and number two. He only rarely has accidents now. We DO still have him in a pull up overnight and haven’t really broached overnight potty training yet. That’s another beast we don’t think he’s quite ready for that yet. Let’s dive right into what worked for us!
POTTY TRAINING TIPS AND TRICKS
First things first, I want to stress THIS fact:
Potty training won’t be successful until your little one is READY to potty train. Like it said above, we tried multiple times over the last 8 months to get Jack potty trained and it only stuck now because he was fully ready. He just wasn’t the other few times. That really frustrated me because I wanted it to be on my time table and that’s just not how it went. SO first things first, before you dive in, remember that. When your kid is ready, it will be so much easier.
OKAY let’s get to the tips.
Number One: Go straight to a big potty and skip the little ones.
I don’t know about your kid, but the little potty just confused Jack. He wanted to go on the real toilet like daddy so we skipped the little, got him a step stool and potty trained him right on the adult toilet. It helped him to see that it was the one dad uses, too.
Number Two: Get a little seat to put on the toilet for going poop, and grab a travel one to put in the diaper bag.
I have this one for at home, and this one for travel. It helps Jack to be able to sit without feeling like he’s going to fall in the toilet. Plus, our at home seat has handles for him to hold onto, as well.
Number Three: Incentivize & PRAISE.
We used mini unwrapped starbursts for his treat. We got a couple bags of them and every time he went pee or poop successfully in the potty, he got two mini starburst. It worked great! In addition to the “potty treats”, we also did TONS of praise. We made sure to tell him good job for trying even if he didn’t go, and then we SHOWERED him with lots of praise when he did. We would do the “potty dance” (just a silly little dance) every time he went and he’d get so excited.
Number Four: Stay at home for three full days before attempting to leave the house.
We decided to potty train over Christmas break for this reason. We had nothing to do but stay home and work on potty training, which was awesome. We weren’t missing out on family time, we weren’t putting off play dates, he wasn’t missing out on anything. We stayed at home fully for 3 days.
- Day 1: No pants, towels every where – just figuring out what the feeling of having to pee and poop are. Let them have accidents. They NEED to! I realized one of the things holding Jack back was that he wasn’t connecting the feeling of having to pee with the action. Seeing himself pee, getting the floor/towel wet as the consequence was huge. He had accidents ALL day long on day one.
- Day 2: No pants for part of the day, underwear for the other part. I did a hybrid day on day two. We started off no underwear and then transitioned to underwear after lunch so he could see what the felt like. I did not put him in underwear until he had successfully gone on the potty several times. We only had 2 accidents on this day.
- Day 3: Underwear all day. On the third day, we did underwear from the get go, stressing that underwear is for day time and pull ups are for nighttime. We had one accident on day three, and it was poop not pee. No pee accidents! After his one poop accident in the morning, he didn’t have anymore poop accidents.
After the third day, we ventured out for a short Target trip to test the waters. He did awesome. We peed before we left the house and then when we got home. Our first multi-hour play date was Friday (day 1 was Monday). He started to have an accident because he was scared about going potty in a public bathroom – but stopped himself, came and got me and then we went to the bathroom where he used the toilet. I was so proud of him. He isn’t scared of public bathrooms anymore.
The very biggest part of potty training for us was that he was ready to start telling us when we had to go. Before he could do that, we were setting the timer and making him go on our timeframe and that wasn’t working. When he could finally tell us when HE had to go, it eliminated the meltdowns completely.
All in all – these tips worked and help eliminate tons of accidents because Jack was ready. I tried all of these things before he was ready and they just simply didn’t work. He needed to be ready himself and once he was, it was smooth sailing.
If you are potty training – God Speed, my friend! You got this (and so does your little one!)
