7 Potty Training (babies really should come pre-trained)

There are so many things in life that while you are in the midst of it you feel like it is the HARDEST THING EVER. Since becoming a mother I have had several of these moments. My first was just before B was born when I became terrified of labour. This was after several "fun" appointments with our midwife where they performed the stretch and sweep.(DO NOT google this if you do not know what it is. You're welcome). My last few days being pregnant I contemplated how to still have a home birth but not have to actually push anything out of me that would remotely feel like what a stretch and sweep feels like.

Then there was teaching B how to sleep which we tackled by following the No Cry Sleep Solution. Which yes was no cry for him but I shed many a tear during the process.We made it through this phase and as I came out of it I seriously high fived myself at what I had accomplished.

Potty training seems easy. You have to pee or poop? Sweet! Do it on the toilet! I would say it was sometime during Day 3 of our training where I found myself wondering if he would ever understand what I was asking him to do. And then on Day 7 the familiar THIS IS THE HARDEST THING EVER and tears came back as I attempted to get us ready for work/daycare while cleaning poop off the kitchen, living room, dining room, hallway and bathroom floors, the toilet and B. 

We are almost a month into our potty training journey and it is going well. The hardest thing ever has been replaced with a new hardest thing ever moment (Operation No More Soother). When we started down this road we wanted to make the process as green as possible.  Here are some of the things we did and what we found worked.

Don't use pull-ups!

When I was reading about all the different potty training methods (Day 3) I noticed a common theme. A lot of books and web resources talk about using pull ups or cloth trainers but then every blog or person I have talked to talks about their frustration with these methods and how good old naked time work the best for them. For months before we started training I had gone back and forth over what we would replace diapers with. Pull-ups were automatically out of the question because I could not find a single provider here that made a pull-up that was close to what our diapers are made from. I looked at cloth trainers but then dismissed them when most users said they were for "advanced" potty training. So I bought little underwear and he wears them when he is out of the house.

Naked Time

We found that just letting B run around pantless really worked for us. If he started to pee he would see it and then stop it as he ran to the bathroom. On the times that he didn't hold it in we didn't have to worry about wet.dirty clothes but instead just about cleaning the floor. Overall we have found that the amount of laundry we do has not increased from potty training. At a month in we are only now starting to add clothes back into his home routine (obviously he wears clothes when he isn't here!).

Think about rewards

We opted to reward B with stickers. I put a sheet of paper up on the wall at his eye level and put a little box of stickers on the back of the toilet. He gets 1 for a pee and 2 for a poop. For every 5 he got at first he would get a treat but now that we have progressed he gets a treat for every 10 stickers. The stickers we had around the house so there was no cost to them. They were from birthday grab bags and from junk mail we got with return address labels with Disney characters on them (I just cut the address off and kept the characters).

Borrow potty training tools

Figure out what tools work for your little one (and you!) before you commit to anything. This will save on the resources needed to make these items and it will save you cash. We didn't know if a potty seat on the toilet or his own little toilet would work so we started with the seat on the toilet. We borrowed it from our friends since their daughter is now fully trained. Once we knew this method would work for us we bought a 2nd seat for daycare. We also bought a small stool second hand rather than new and instead of buying potty training books and videos we downloaded them to our PlayBook for all of us to learn from. 

Flushing

Kids love to flush the toilet for some reason. B loves to say bye bye to pee and poop and sometimes he tries to do it when there is nothing in the toilet. We stop him every time before he flushes and remind him that flushing is only for when there is something that needs to be flushed. I thought about introducing the 'If its yellow let it mellow' concept to him but I didn't think his school teachers would like that too much so we will save that for a later date.

What have you done to reduce the impact of your potty training? What worked best for you?

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