As promised, here’s the nuts and bolts of how we actually potty trained our little gal.
Just a note: a lot of this is from Oh Crap, minus the intensity and sexism. No claims here to original content in terms of approach; this is just exactly what we did, with a lot of modifications. There were SO many little things we had to pivot on, but because this still worked, I’m writing it all out with what we learned on the way, in hopes it will help another parent somewhere out there. Also, every kid and family is so different, I imagine some of what worked for us won’t work for others, and some of what didn’t work well for us worked for others. So you get it all, even the messy bits!
We set a date. We picked a handful of days when I was on vacation and my husband was on a lighter schedule in July to be home, inside of our house, with absolutely NOTHING else going on. Not one single birthday, museum or beach trip. Nothing. I actually think our daughter benefited from more of this. It’s a big thing to learn, so it really does need to be the most mundane, un-busy 3 day weekend you can find. But honestly, more is better.
We talked about it. A LOT. But honestly, maybe not enough? I think this was our pitfall. One part of Oh Crap that is a bit conflicting to me is that in certain parts it says not to make too big a deal of things, but on re-read, you do want your child to be prepared for what's to come. Once we started and things were going badly, we didn’t go back, but we did (while keeping her in diapers only for naps and sleeping) check out books, watch videos and sing songs about using the potty. We always sort of talked about it (she came with us to use the restroom, and we’d explain to her exactly what we were doing), but I think at this (and so many ages) really sitting down and talking them through big changes in age-appropriate detail is important. I think we should have done this BEFORE we started potty training. Unfortunately we didn’t.
We prepared. We bought the potties (you may need several, considering borrowing from friends.) We rolled up the carpets. We decided about rewards (at first we decided against them, eventually we caved and gave her prunes for poops in the potty.) We did a couple of fun things together the days leading up to potty training, then got a good night’s sleep. Oh, and we hid the diapers and made a sort of big deal of it (‘bye bye, diapers! These are your new sleep pants!’)
Days 1-3. The goal of day 1 in Oh Crap is to help your child move from ‘I peed’ to recognizing when they’re peeing, and finally recognizing that they have to go before they pee their pants. These 3 days were SO HARD. We got her up, took off her diaper, and started our day. You are more or less supposed to either see them peeing, tell them ‘hold it! pee goes on the potty’ and physically move them to the nearest potty. OR, every hour-ish prompted them to sit on the potty. Things went downhill pretty quickly. Our kid had EC’ed, so we knew she already recognized the feeling of peeing, and we knew COULD sit on the potty. She just didn’t want to stop playing and do it. But she saw my (hard to hide) stress after the 3rd, 4th and 5th mess, and it definitely rubbed off on her. She started to hold her pee until naptime, when we put her back in a diaper. But she absolutely no-way-in-hell wanted to sit on her potty, and was losing it by the end of the day (and so was I.)
Luckily the next day Peter was off work and I wanted to see if his approach would yield better results. So we kept it up. It was the same awfulness, except now she held her poop AND pee in to use the diaper at naptime and soaked through them. We figured we’d give it one more day and call the pediatrician Monday to make sure our child holding it for 7-8 hours wasn’t completely detrimental to her health. By day 3, while she still pooped in her pants, she was holding her pee and at the very least not peeing on the floor (when she did, we cleaned it together, as non-punitively as possible.) I did a lit search and couldn’t find strong studies on urine withholding and long term negative effects.
With my pediatrician’s support (she didn’t think UTI’s or later bladder issues were a major risk either), Peter and I had a talk and ultimately decided that while things felt pretty stressful, they weren’t exactly going…badly? By then, she had managed to sit on the potty a couple of times, and we made a big deal of it with a lot of verbal praise. We also played a few games on the potty to re-acclimate her to the potty, and she finally stopped screaming every time we went near it. Lastly, we stopped making a big deal of peeing and pooping altogether. Sunday night rolled around, and we had to decide if we were going to keep it up, or go back to diapers and try again in a few weeks. We decided to power through and see what happened.
Days 3-75 (kidding, sort of.) From there it slowly got easier every day. Our mantra became, ‘I trust you to tell me when you need to use the potty. When you need to go tell me, and I’ll help you’ but with some prompting thrown in. We also invited her to come and pee with us, and potty is now part of the nap and bedtime routine (although it does take a bit of bribing with books.) She still had more poops in the diapers than the potty, but would occasionally have a success on the potty. The pooping did scare her a bit, so we tried to keep things calm, rub her back and read books. If she got a poop in the potty, she got prunes! This is also a great time in potty training to introduce stool softeners (both natural and miralax! I’m a fan of both. Talk to your doctor before starting any new medications)
We started with outings. Ok this may be out of timeline. I stayed inside for way too long, so maybe plan an outing sooner. It WILL build your confidence. But for us, on day 3 or 4, we HAD to go out- she had a doctor’s appointment- so away we went.
It was a ten minute drive. I was terrified of her peeing on the car seat (I had to take the WHOLE THING apart and wash it after a bout of carsickness not 2 months before.) I even lined the car seat with a chuck (absolutely do not do this- it’s not safe!)
She did fine. No accidents!
Then we went to the park 3 minutes away in the stroller, also lined with a chuck- fine.
The library, a ten minute walk- fine.
Church- a ten minute drive and TWO HOUR SERVICE- no accidents.
The following days and weeks were a blur, but in short- she did great! And we both enjoyed ourselves and were happier to get away from that house and all those weird potty training vibes. I truly thing it was a boost in confidence for both of us. And to this day she hasn’t had one accident in the car seat (and just one in the stroller in 3 months!)
The final lap. Poops took awhile, but truly, since I wrote this out in October, I think we had 3 accidents. We really were close!
On our trip to London in September, something very interesting happened to us- jetlag. With the whacked out sleep schedule, she didn’t get into her beloved pooping pants (sorry, diaper) until 27 hours after we left our house in Boston (we used cloth pull ups on the flight, with only one accident when we couldn’t get up during landing to pee.) So right before her first nap, to everyone’s shock, she pooped on the potty! (She hadn’t done this in a while.) I was thrilled and proceeded to put her down for her nap the next day without a diaper on. After which she promptly pooped her pants. An unpleasant and natural consequence of this was having to wake her early from her nap and clean her up. She was understandably very upset. I felt terrible. I think we both did.
I think after this she began to naturally have an aversion to pooping in her pants, but continued to do so (in a diaper) during naptime because she’d wake up from her naps really distraught. Occasionally she’d poop on the potty around breakfast, but often she’d poop in the crib. It seemed like maybe we were doing her a disservice by putting her down to her nap too early, not getting her up quickly enough in the morning. So we started getting her up right away, and at naptime, if she asked for more books, we’d allow it- on the potty. In October, it clicked. She pooped on the potty before her nap one Sunday, then again, then again. She had an accident after one week, then went two weeks without any accidents. Another two on our road trip. It's now been about 3 weeks and she consistently uses the potty.
I want to close this up by saying I don’t think this is the right approach, mostly because I don’t think there is one right approach. Potty training isn’t as scientifically rigid as, say, deciding which febrile kid in the ER gets a work up. It’s social, psychological, developmental- and way more nuanced. I think we did some things right (train early.) I think we did a lot of things wrong (over-prompting, under-preparing her for day 1, letting her poop her pants in London.) I think we have a ton of privilege- a space where we could allow for accidents, access to resources to learn and get advice, and most importantly, the privilege of lots of free time off together this summer. I know many families don’t have that. If you do, or even if you don’t and want to give potty training a younger toddler a shot, go for it- I’ll be your number one cheerleader. I hope this was helpful on your journey, and I hope it goes great.
