Toilet Time!

Potty training was one of those things that I absolutely dreaded. I’m not even sure why; I think it was this idea of a battle of the wills over using the toilet, and somehow my kids being in their teens and still wearing diapers. I’m not sure what, but it was something I dreaded.

We tried with Ave on occasion, before she was 2, but she was not interested. Every once in a while we’d see if she was interested, but she wasn’t. During the summer we decided to go sans-diaper for swimming lessons, and had no incidents of pool sharks. Then she started refusing to wear a diaper when I put her down for a nap….with no incidents. Then she started refusing to put a diaper on after the nap….with no incidents. By August, she was flat out refusing to ever put a diaper on, except at night time. And was having absolutely no accidents…even on a long car drive.

Within 2 weeks of all this we decided that we could officially claim she was potty trained, besides that one incident of her pooping in the backyard while she was outside playing (haha…it just didn’t look like the dogs’).

We had one poop incident in the fall, that I think was brought on by her cousin having an accident {I think she wanted to see how I would react}. She freaked after she did it, because the poop was all over her backside. I just reiterated that that’s why we use the potty and not our undies…and then laughed at how upset and disgusted she was by having pooped in her undies {not in her presence of course}.

At Christmas she decided that she didn’t want to wear a diaper at bed time. So I woke up every few hours to make sure that she got out of bed and went potty. Then she got sick and I insisted that she wear a diaper at night, because she needed to sleep and I was getting a bit tired of getting up several times a night, even when the babies didn’t need me.

I can now tell you that Avelyn has been entirely diaper free for almost 3 weeks…there was 1 incident, but it was my fault {I usually wake her at 10:30 or so and kept reading until I heard her crying at 11:15, that she’d wet the bed}. There hasn’t been an incident since. We’ve even decreased the number of times we get her out of bed. We were doing it twice {10:30 and 3:30 or so} and now it’s only at 10:30 and she’s doing great.

So what’s the secret to potty training?

They’ll do it when their ready: No pressure. There is absolutely no point in forcing the kid to do it. It’s just going to be traumatic for them and you. And it’s all the more better if you can make it easier for them to do on their own. Summer works for us, because Ave is usually wearing a dress, which makes it very easy for her to go in the bathroom on her own and go. I honestly never even need to ask her anymore if she needs to go potty, she just does it when she needs to.

As for how to potty train triplets….that’s going to be another story, but we’ll probably take the same approach. But, for now, we only have 3 in diapers.