Potty Training Your Baby

If you prepare for potty training well, you can improve the chances of a successful potty training experience. If you go into potty training blindly, you risk not only failure, but also frustration for you and your baby that could last a long time. So, by all means think ahead about a plan you will take when potty training your baby. I will share what we did when potty training our boy. Perhaps you can use it to plan a strategy that will work for you and your baby.

Potty training is a very time intensive period. Select a time when there are enough people available to create a team. Prepare the team so that everyone is doing the same thing. If only one person is doing the potty training, that person should be very patient with lots of time available for the baby and for cleaning up.

At least two or three people will be better, because it will decrease the risk of frustration when there are accidents and the cheering of two to three people will be more impressive when the baby is successful.

Pick a time in advance when enough people are home from work and school so that there is sufficient time to focus on the baby and on the challenges ahead.

We selected the week just before Christmas to do our potty training. Pre-school was closed and there was plenty of time after the holidays for our family to focus on our baby. We could take up to several weeks if necessary to potty train our baby. Fortunately, it was not necessary.

On the first day of potty training, we dressed our boy in a T-shirt and sweater for warmth, cotton underwear and non-skid socks.

We used the potty doll to show our boy what the baby should do when he needs to use the potty. When the doll peed in the potty, we celebrated the success of the doll and cheered in much the same way we would cheer for our boy. We  made the doll pee in her underwear and expressed our disappointment in the doll. We repeated this exercise 2 or 3 times during the day.

We paid about $25 for a potty doll that we used for just a few hours, so I am not sure if that was a good investment or not. But potty training was very successful for us. Would we have been so successful without the potty doll? If I had to do it all over again, I would buy the potty doll again. The amount of money we have already saved in diapers has already paid for the potty doll.

During the day we gave our baby plenty of juice to drink. Why? The more juice the more frequently he would need to use the potty, giving us more chances for success. We also gave our baby lots of dry crackers as rewards. Why? The more crackers, the thirstier he was, the more juice he drank.

We frequently asked our boy if he needed to use the potty. Frequent reminders helped him to learn to pay attention to his bladder and to notice what he was feeling.

After a meal, we sat our guy on the potty and kept him there with television until we thought he was successful. Use whatever you need to use to keep your child on the potty after a meal as long as possible. In our case television worked. If your baby has a favorite toy, book or game that will keep them seated on the potty, use it after a meal when they are more likely to need to use the toilet. This will give you an opportunity for "success".

In our first day of potty training, we probably had a success rate of about 50%. Not bad for a beginning.

You MUST prepare for potty training success and failure, because you will have both. It is important to have a response for both potty training success and potty training failure. But it is also important to make success more memorable than failure. Here is what we did:

Failure: Our comments were not over the top, but simply expressed our disappointment. "Oh no, we had an accident", "That's Ok, but can you help to clean it up?" and "Please try to use the potty next time".

Success: We created a "Victory Dance" which was very memorable. We would hold his hands while we jumped in a circle shouting "Yea, Yea, YEA". Then Papa picked him up three times and raised him so that he could touch the ceiling, while Mama jumped in front of him. I think our neighbors heard the shouts. Our boy would grin from ear to ear during the victory dance and look forward to the craziness. This went on for at least a week, well after he was accident free.

As indicated, on the first day we had a success rate of about 50%. Everyday we would remind our guy about the potty at times when we knew he probably needed to use it, for example:

* When he woke up in the morning, he would go immediately on the potty.

* Every hour or so, we would suggest to him to sit on the potty

* After his lunch we would sit him on the potty

* After his nap we would sit him on the potty

We celebrated every success with lots and lots of loud cheering, kisses and hugs. Accidents were treated calmly with no frustration "Oh it is a pity that we had an accident". Each day, the success rate climbed, until by day 3 or 4 we were accident free.

What do we do when we are not at home?

Before leaving home, we suggest that our boy sits on the potty and make pee. He always does.

When we are away from home, about once per hour or so, we take him to a public toilet. We hold him over the toilet and ask him to pee. He always does and we have not had an accident so far.

What do we do for night and naps?

Bedtime is the only time our boy wears diapers now. But more often than not, he wakes up from his naps with dry diapers and they get recycled at night. While we were using 6-7 diapers per day before potty training, we now use 1 or 2 per day. During the day, he now wears regular cotton underwear that we bought for his potty training purposes.