June 6, 2022
Potty training is a very interesting time in the life of your amazing yet sometimes stubborn toddler. Almost certain it can include you going through 3 different types of emotions in 5 minutes. You might just find yourself screaming into a pillow or crying hysterically out loud. But the best times are those couple moments, just casually dancing to the baby shark song with your toddler because he FINALLY succeeded in going pee-pee or poo-poo on the potty. If you are the luckiest parent in the universe maybe both in one trip! I’m here to tell you, even I being as fabulous as I am, was not that lucky. But, I will take you guys on a trip down memory lane as I gift to you the tips I used to potty train my son.
First thing’s first, you must appeal to your child’s better nature. So with my son, watching paw patrol was his niche. So being the smarty-pants that I am, I went ahead and purchased a paw patrol potty from my neighborhood Walmart. Brilliant! I know. Second, present this gift wherever you know your child spends the most time during their day. Since Josiah loves watching TV you better believe I plopped that potty right in front of that flat screen. Every morning for about 30 minutes, he’d sit and play on that potty. It helped to have him in only a t-shirt during the beginning stage or no clothes at all. We all know the joy our children have running butter ball through the house anyway, so might as well make them as comfortable as possible. The benefit of this was just to familiarize him with it and to get him to enjoy it because weather he liked it or not, I wasn’t planning on buying any more diapers.
Stage two, speaking the magic words into existence. “Tell mommy if you have to go pee-pee/poo-poo on the potty, OK Josiah?”…Silence. I repeated it every 10 minutes one day, every 30 minutes another day, and every hour on the last day. He learned the magic words easily..just after, he went potty on the floor instead of inside the potty. Woosah and keep it moving OG’s you’re almost to the finish line.
Stage 3, the rewards. My son LOVES every so much any type of fruit snacks. So to lessen those accidents on my one-of-a-kind carpet, I would use the fruit snacks as a reward for successfully using his potty. With the candy came responsibility. After using the potty I had him detach the bowl and take it into the bathroom and pour it into the grown-up potty and flush the toilet. See where I’m going with this my clever parents?
Welcome to stage four. Now that my son was connecting those dots I delicately facilitated, climbing onto the toilet himself to go potty was a breeze. Plus I used his potty as a stepping stool to get up there all by himself. He took pride in telling me he had it all under control and did not need my help wiping. The satisfaction of hearing those pitter-pattering feet running through the hallway in the direction of the potty was like a dream come true. Even he was super excited to join the club of manhood. I could hardly believe it when he started to stand up on his own and lean over that grown-up potty to do his business. I didn’t know whether to say “Aw look at my baby go, so grown-up” or to close the door and give him his privacy because obviously, he was born to do this.
It was a true whirlwind of emotions potty training my two-year-old son but was worth every stressful moment in the end. So fear not mommies and daddies of all potty-training ages, This 2 shall pass.
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