Potty Training – The 2nd Time Around

I need to apologize to all of those people I called liars when they proclaimed to potty train their child in only 2 days.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was possibly until now because Noah has basically potty trained himself in a day. We’ve gone 3 days in big kid underwear, except when he sleeps, and he has had 0 accidents. (He’s still working on pooping in the potty though.)

Here’s a little secret about parenting, “ALL KIDS ARE DIFFERENT.”

Jude struggled with potty training and still does at 5 years old. I honestly thought everyone must be lying about potty training because there is no way my 1st child was potty trained in 2 days, weeks, months, years even. It’s an ongoing battle of wills and his biggest struggle is stopping what he’s doing to go pee otherwise he’s got it down pat.

Now Noah on the other hand, has a personality that is the complete opposite of Jude. That’s really no surprise since everyone is different. He is also a lot more verbal and easily expresses his desires, so I was able to address his desire to use the potty. He also has the added benefit of having a cool older brother that uses the potty (positive peer pressure FTW!). So I guess potty training was just sort of natural for him.

Saturday morning when I got him up I decided to put him in underwear, just on a whim really. Then I took him to the potty every hour until nap time just to see how it would go, I set my expectations low. Then he went and had dry pants all day. Completely shocked me. By Sunday evening he was telling us when he had to use the potty and doing everything by himself. He still poops in his diaper after nap (he’s an after nap pooper), so eventually we’ll work on pooping in the potty. But for now I’m enjoying the ease in which he essentially potty trained himself. Bonus, fewer diaper changes for me!

I’m learning that potty training has less to do with technique and more to do with each individual child.

Here are my potty training tips (they aren’t really tips but more encouragements)

• Potty train when they are ready
• Tailor your approach to their personality (there is no fool-proof method)
• Don’t expect them to potty train like any other kid (again there is no 1-right way to potty train)
• And don’t take it personally. – With Jude’s struggles I felt like I failed parenting, with Noah I felt like I nailed it. When in all honest I had very little to do with any of the outcomes. Potty training is completely the child’s accomplishment, as a parent I just aid them in the process. So don’t feel guilty or like a failure if your child doesn’t get it right away. And by all means, don’t gloat if your child comes out of the womb potty trained. All kids are different. PERIOD.

I’m interested to see how different potty training Simon will be from the other 2 boys. And no, we’re not into EC so I’m not trying to potty train my 9 month old.