She’s mostly in dresses these days to make it easier to use the potty without help.
Toddler Girl is potty trained (or at least 98%)! This is fantastic, as potty training has been a bit of a journey for us. When TG was about 14 months old, I was reading Diaper Free Before Three by Jill M. Lekovich, MD. The title of the book is a bit misleading, as Dr. Lekovich believes that in a perfect world, you start your child on the potty at around 9 months and have them potty trained well before 2 years. The book is full of reasons why early potty training is better for children, and reminds you that the average age children get out of diapers is much lower in most parts of the world.
It seemed appealing, and I do like being unconventional. TG had brutal diaper rash issues at this point, so we got a potty and started trying with her. Little did I know that I was just barely pregnant with Wonder Baby when I started TG on the potty, which seriously derailed our early potty training attempts.
For the next maybe, 7 months, we had TG in panties and tried to get her to use the potty. She peed on the floor a lot. She pooped in her panties now and then, which was super fun to clean up. She had some successes, but just didn’t seem to grasp it. I was not much help with this as I was so tired and so ill from the pregnancy. that I had trouble keeping an eagle eye on her. We would give up and put her back in diapers, then she would rash up again and we would try the panties again. It just wasn’t working for us, and somewhere in my third trimester, when the weather cooled off, I called it quits. She went back in diapers full time and I resigned myself to having two children in diapers. Cloth diapers.
As it turns out, two in diapers is not such a big deal. Toddlers need to be changed a lot less than babies, and even cloth is no real extra work as you’re doing the laundry regularly for the baby anyway. People would ask me when we were going to potty train, and I would say “not this week!” I didn’t feel I could give potty training the attention it obviously needed when I was so tired and busy with the baby, not to mention all the nursing. I put it off until spring, then summer, then after a couple trips. Last week I decided we were ready. Wonder Baby is at an age where she’s less all consuming, it’s nice and warm out, and Toddler Girl seems to catch on to things really well these days.
I reread Mrs. Cowgirl and Mr. Bee’s recent posts on potty training (oh how I love being a part of this community of parents!) and psyched us up. We decided to start on Monday as Mr. Superhero has Monday-Friday afternoon off, giving us 4.5 days of two-parent action. I made a chart. Tragically, my printer was out of ink so I had to draw by hand (the horror!), but I tried to make it nice. I found some stickers. Our plan was simple and included:
– Stickers for rewards. She got a star for peeing and a puppy or kitty for pooping. I decided against a big prize because I didn’t think she would honestly care about a long term goal, and I avoided candy because I’m trying not to treat food as a reward or punishment. I think this will give her a healthier view of treats, but that’s another issue. There was also a ton of cheering, and the reward of getting to flush the toilet.
– Watered down juice so she pees more. She hardly ever gets juice so she thought this was great.
– Bare bum for the first three days, then panties once she got the hang of it. Because I was tired of dealing with dirty panties.
– Centrally located potty. We have a small house, so we shut the doors to the carpeted bedrooms and put the potty between the kitchen and the living room.
– Lots of attention. We watched her like a hawk and put her on the potty the second she started peeing. We sat by her and chatted or read her books when she was on the potty.
I was all prepared for it to be a big deal, but you know what? She got it halfway through day 2! She’s only had a couple accidents in the evening when she’s tired, and has pooped on the potty since day 3. She is still in diapers for naps and nighttime, but doesn’t seem to be bothered about it and doesn’t ask for diapers during the day. She’s had no accidents when we’re out and even did well at my parents’ for five days. I am thrilled!
I wouldn’t say that early potty training doesn’t work; I’m sure it does, but it didn’t work for us while I was pregnant. It requires a level of dedication that I just couldn’t muster, and generally takes months before they’re trained. After seeing how easy it was to potty train Toddler Girls at 30 months (which is still decently young, I think), I’m not sure we would bother trying the early route with Wonder Baby.
Have any of you successfully potty trained before 18 months? Anyone tried and failed like us?
Potty training part 8 of 14
1. Best Potties by Guides2. Favorite Potty Training Books by Mrs. Bee
3. Potty Training Accessories by Guides
4. Printable Potty Training Rewards Chart by printables
5. Three-day potty training by parenting
6. It's My Potty and I'll Try if I Want To by mrs. wagon
7. Let the potty training begin by Mrs. Sunglasses
8. Conventional vs Early Potty Training by Mrs. Superhero
9. Charlie is now Prince of the Potty! by Mr. Bee
10. Potty Training Bootcamp by Mrs. Cowgirl
11. Style vs. Practicality: Skinny Jeans and Little Boys by Mrs. Cowgirl
12. Easy Does it with the Potty by Mrs. High Heels
13. Enter the World of Potty Training by Mrs. Checkers
14. Potty training a 22 Month Old by mrs. tictactoe
squash / 13199 posts
Yay for potty training! How old is she?
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
My LO is 19-months and I have been trying to find a good weekend for me and DH to do some dedicated, focused potty training!
I feel like I haven’t done enough research yet to just dive in on this, but I would like to do it within the next month or two. I also plan to use stickers and don’t like giving food as a type of “reward”.
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
When you say centrally located potty, I’m guessing you didn’t use one of those over the toilet potties? We have this one – http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Precious-Planet-Froggy-Friend/dp/B005IWM8GY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1343402861&sr=8-3&keywords=potty+training
But we also have an over the toilet one too. Which one worked for you?
guest
My littles is 23 months and we started trying about 2 months ago. I’m not sure if she didn’t understand the concept or just really wasn’t into it, but we put her back in diapers and are going to give it another go once she seems a little more attentive. Hopefully we can give her the attention it will need!
GOLD / pear / 1845 posts
@Mrs. High Heels: I think a little potty is best for little ones, it’s less scary and they can plant their feet on the ground with is helpful for #2. We will switch to one of those do toilet seats where the little seat hides in the lid later on.
@Mrsbells: She’s 30 months, so almost 2 1/2.
hostess / wonderful watermelon / 39513 posts
Thank you for this post! My mom and MIL want me to start soon and my LO is only 7 months! They are not internet savvy so I will print out this post and show it to them!
guest
I was potty trained by the time I was one… that’s not to say that there were no accidents, but by one I knew how to indicate that I needed to go. But I was born outside of the US, and my parents didn’t have a washing machine.
So, with that in mind, we’re kind of sort of trying elimination communication.
GOLD / pomelo / 5167 posts
Yay!!!!!!!!!! This is awesome. Can’t wait to be there. I’m writing up a potty training post too. Ours is still in the works but then again Mavi JUST turned 2. It’s fun to compare how everyone goes about it.
persimmon / 1255 posts
I’ve been doing EC with LO since she was 11 months so she knows to potty in the toilet and she does go when I put her on the potty chair. She’s now 20 months and I’ve been meaning to fully potty train her using the 3-day potty training method, however there’s never a convenient time to dedicate 3 days at home to training.
Frustrating thing is she actually PREFERS going in her diapers and/or panties. I’ll ask her if she needs to go potty and she’ll shake her head, only to proceed to go in her diaper/panty.
I’d love to hear suggestions on how to incentivize my LO to want to use the potty. She already gets a reward when she goes.
pomelo / 5178 posts
We did elimination communication with DD starting at about 3 months, and we successfully potty trained her by 18 months. I was really set on having her potty trained before I had DS, and sure enough, she was fully out of diapers by the time I was 6 months pregnant.
To be honest, though, the first 6-8 weeks of DS’s life were more difficult because DD wasn’t in diapers! Because she was so little, she couldn’t hold it for longer than maybe a couple minutes, which meant, no matter what I was doing with DS, if DD said she needed to go potty I had to drop everything and rush her to the bathroom. There were many times I thought, Man, this would be so much easier if she was in diapers still!” Once we worked with her and taught her how to use the potty independently, though, all of our lives got much, much easier. Now, she’s 26 months and takes herself to potty; I do usually remind her to wash her hands, but otherwise, she does it pretty much all on her own.
I really loved elimination communication, and we’ve already started doing it with DS (he’s 4 months). My hope is to have him fully potty trained by 20 months and immediately work on him using the potty independently, rather than relying on us to help him. Fingers crossed, but if everything works out, he’ll be completely independent on the potty long before #3 comes along.
pomelo / 5178 posts
@Red: Maybe try backing off for a few weeks and then starting over? I’ve seen with other kids that sometimes they’re just not ready, and ignoring it for a little bit and then restarting reignites their interest/enthusiasm.
Also, we had similar issues around that age. DD would say no she didn’t need to go, only to have an accident minutes later, or she’d change her mind about whether she really needed to go like 5-6 times before we could finally get her upstairs on the potty. We found two things that worked when she refused to go: 1) We’d ask if she needed to go in a really excited voice. Even if she refused, we’d start walking her toward the bathroom clapping, singing, and making a really big production out of using the potty. E.g. “Yeah! We’re gonna go potty! I’m so excited! Woo-hoo!” 2) Sometimes we’d just scoop her up and rush into the bathroom like we had to really rush to get there. We’d encourage her by saying things, “Hurry, hurry, faster! We have to go potty right now!” and we’d run fast to the bathroom. Both of these methods seemed to get her excited about going potty, and she’d go along with us much easier.
Finally, if you just take away diapers altogether, she will eventually understand using the potty full-time. It might be a week or so of lots of accidents to clean up, but I found with DD that switching back and forth between underwear and training pants was somewhat confusing. Once we completely took training pants away and only gave her the option of underwear, she caught on pretty quickly to use the potty all the time, rather than just part-time.
persimmon / 1255 posts
@Honeybee: Yeah, I think I’m gonna give her a break and then just go cold turrkey with diapers. Thanks for the suggestions.
blogger / pineapple / 12381 posts
We didn’t do EC, but we were always pretty tuned into potty cues. We started potty training as soon as Lala showed some readiness (around about 16 months or so). Over time she got more and more independent with it and now she can go potty on her own (but she still loves to have us in there!). We’re still working on poop, but she’s trained for urine and has been for a while.
guest
My daughter showed readiness at 16 months by taking off her diaper every time it was wet. I planned to do the 3 day diaper free method, but was still preparing for it when my DD kept taking her diaper off and refused to keep it on. So I did it part time for two weeks. During that time she got used to sitting on the potty, I bought a second potty, and I caught her peeing and put her on the potty, and highly congratulated her. I wanted my husband to help with the 3 full days, but that didn’t happen, so I was all on my own, Fortunately, she got it by midmorning on the first day. She went to her littly potty on her own and peed and brought it to me. She was afraid to poop on it, but I kept diapers off her, so she had to poop in it. I also kept diapers off her for naps and nighttime. She shares the bed with me, so when she started to pee, I felt it, and put her on the potty. It only took 3 nights of accidents for her to get it. It has been two and half weeks of no diapers at all, and she rarely has accidents now. I don’t put panties or pants on her, even outside. When we go out, I take her potty in the stroller and put a dress on her. If we’re going to Manhattan (1 1/2 hour commute) I carry her in a wap without a diaper, and she waits till we get there to pee. (I used a diaper for the train till she was leaving it dry.) I was quite surprised at how easy it all was. I had to clean up a lot of pee, but I think that was worth not having her in diapers anymore.