Potty training. The necessary battle that must ensue with all of our offspring. The freedom from diapers while now being tethered to the toilet. Ahh, the smell of agitation in the air. The financial rewards versus the I have to go potty every 6 minutes. The (new) need to investigate every single restroom in the world. Every single one. If a place has a restroom, we MUST visit it, even if we just went potty 3.6 seconds ago in the last place with a bathroom. It’s a must though, as we can’t have our youngins headin off to college in their pampers. But seriously, that struggle is real. You can’t MAKE someone go to the bathroom. You also can’t tell someone they DON’T have to use the toilet. So it’s balance right? Wrong. There is no balance, just chaos. It is pure madness until it's complete and these little things are the makers of the mayhem.
I made three humans that we had to navigate toilet training with. All three of these people were a different animal to tackle. Honestly, house training the dogs was easier. The first human…. Yea I thought he was actually going to college in diapers. He displayed all the signs of readiness – woke dry, verbalized what was going on in the diaper, etc. Got the potty seat, got the targets, got the reward chart, got the character underwear and you know what else I got? A big Nope from this small human. He wasn’t doing it. At one point I (obviously mistakenly) said Alright kiddo, it’s time to try to pee in your potty seat. My man picks up the padded cushion off the training toilet, places it in front of him and proceeds to pee, in the seat, onto my floor.
(Almost 3yr old: 1 – Mommy: negative 10)
We powered through and survived. I’m not sure how but we did it. And before college to boot. I call that a win.
Along comes kid number two. At 18 months old she decided to strip, walk into the bathroom and sit on the potty. That was it. She was finished with diapers. It was still a process from there but for the most part she was completely trained including overnights by a little over two years old. She is the only one who actually used the little potty. We left it in her room over night and she would wake and use it while still in the training phase. Thank goodness cause here comes kid number three and diapers are expensive.
My wonderful, loving and happy last kid. He really is the sweetest (they all really are good fertilized eggs, he’s just the smallest). This one though, really has to choose the adventurous, difficult way for everything. Everything. All tasks have to be through the brick wall, never ever around it, and absolutely not through the open door. Potty training was no exception. Kid 3, sigh, he also was not a fan of the little kid training potty, similar to kid 1. Or the targets. Couldn’t care less about your positive reinforcement rewards and is not food driven (yes yes, Im aware food shouldnt be used as a reward but desprate times and all). But he DID like to try out the bathroom in Barbie’s dreamhouse. And in Barbies garage, Cause apparently funk that bish. He also didn’t really see the need in ‘pushing it down’ so we would pee straight out into the unknown. Yup. We did manage though. We were able to get him fully trained (honestly… mediocre at best) to go into preschool, which is a whole other story in itself, before his third birthday.
Fast forward to now…we have successfully passed that skills check and own three fully housebroken people.
If you are currently going through this fantastic milestone – Stand strong, you got this. This does not define you as a parent. You can't quit, no matter how amazing it sounds, and you can't force the process to complete. And a process it will be. When you think you're heading full steam in the right direction, nope. They're going to level up to the next stage of absolutely not.
If you’re like us and have already navigated this awful time in parenthood – WooHoo! I cant believe we made it! To the rest - you're never going to believe all the ducking bullship to come, am I right?? 😂 Good Luck!
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