Potty Train Your Child in Three Days

I got potty training totally wrong with my first child. Shortly after her second birthday, two experienced mom friends (one who had three kids—two of whom were teenagers!) told me that 2 ½ was the perfect age to toilet train. Any earlier than that, these moms said, kids are not really ready; but after 3, the moms warned, your kid will likely become obstinate and refuse to use anything but a diaper. That seemed frightening, so I took their advice. Besides, two out of two moms told me so; that’s a rate of 100 percent!

I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say I “potty trained” my daughter at 2 ½, even though she was missing one of the key indicators of readiness.

On the bright side, I was much better prepared when my son came along. It took a single weekend to potty train him. I just followed these steps:

1. Introduce the potty way before training. The potty became a fixture in our bathroom at least a couple of months before we began training in earnest. We read books about using it, let our son sit on it, and all that good stuff so that he was well prepared.
2. Do it when he’s ready. Before potty training my daughter, I’d read that signs for readiness include verbal ability (child should be able to talk about the potty and understand what you’re saying about it), interest in the potty, and the ability to stay dry for at least 2 hours. My daughter had the first two covered, and, like Meatloaf says, two out of three ain’t bad, so I forged ahead, even though she hardly ever stayed dry for 2+ hours. Looking back, this was my big mistake; she just had to go too often for the training to take. So with my son, when he was about 2 ½, I started making a point to check his diaper every two hours and note how often it was dry. When he was regularly dry after two hours, I exchanged the diapers for pull-ups and had him sit on the potty every time he had a dry diaper—and he often went. That meant he had already experienced many potty successes before we started training in earnest. When he started going in the potty more often than not, I told him that soon, like his sister, he wasn’t going to need pull-ups anymore. We marked on the calendar the day he was to give them up for good. On that day….
3. Keep your child naked from the waist down. Since I didn’t work on Fridays, we decided to start potty training on that day of the week so we could be home with nowhere to go for three days straight—and my son could walk around buck from the waist down. Since every second counts in the beginning, this step is key!
4. Bring the potty in whatever room you’re in. Again, every second counts. Once he starts peeing with no diaper to catch it, you want to be able to pop him on that potty right away.
5. Keep clothes simple and to a minimum. When Monday came, we dressed him in the superhero underwear he’d picked out and a pair of elastic-waist pants and sent him to daycare. I had discussed the plan with his teachers beforehand so that they were prepared and knew to take him to the bathroom every two hours. And guess what? He didn’t have a single accident that day.
6. Realize there’s no going back. Except for nighttime and naptime, my son never wore a diaper or pull-up again. Like any kid, he had some accidents here and there, but they were definitely the exception, not the norm. (One more exception to the no-more-diapers rule: Some kids ask for a diaper for bowel movements in the beginning; the general consensus among experts is that this is fine to do.)
7. Don’t expect him to initiate for a long (and I mean loooong) time. This was another mistake I made with my daughter. I assumed that because she was “trained,” she’d know when she needed to go. Incredibly, sometimes I’d even ask her, “Do you need to use the potty?” and I’d take her at her word when she said no! The only time I forced her to go was before leaving the house. With my son, I knew better. I never asked, just led him to the potty (read tips on how to pull off this feat without major protest here), every two hours or so in the beginning, and then, eventually, when he started initiating more, only when it had been a suspiciously long time since he’d last used it (and, of course, always before leaving the house!).

I hope these tricks of the training trade work as well for you as they did for me.

Do you have any helpful potty training tips for other moms? Comment below!