10 Potty Training Tricks {I wish someone had told me}

Picture this: Our family is up in Michigan enjoying a wonderful getaway weekend. We go up every fall to visit the Henry Ford Museum and go to the annual old car festival. It’s a beautiful fall day and we’re all having a wonderful time – until we’re not. Anyone who’s a parent knows the moment. The moment when “I’m starving” and “I should have laid down for a nap hours ago” collide into a beautiful, weepy mess. At 8 1/2 months pregnant, this moment hit for Ellie and I both around the same time. I suggested that I take her back to the hotel for a few hours to sleep and then we would rejoin the group later in the evening. I took El out to the car when she promptly announces that she needs to go potty. We’d been potty training for about 3 months at this point and she was getting pretty good at making it without an accident, but we got in the habit of keeping a small child’s potty in the back of the van for just such occasions. We made it out to the van, I opened up the trunk, pulled down her pants, and set her up in her own private “throne” in the middle of the museum parking lot. Usually it’s a quick pee, wipe, dump it in the grass, and go sort of a deal….but as luck would have it, somewhere between the corndog we let her eat for lunch and the endless snacks we let her have in the car collided into a 30 minute explosive pooping session in the back of the minivan.

These are the moments that define us as parents.

What can you even do except laugh when things like this happen? The worst part? You can’t just dump human feces in the mulch like you can pee. So, I had to drive across town to the hotel with sloshing poo in the back of mycar on a beautiful 85 degree day and then try to carry it into the hotel room without anyone noticing I’m literally toting a toilet full of crap.

With a three year old and an 8 month old, I live in a world of poop. Even though the 3 year old successfully puts hers into the potty, she’s still not savvy enough to get herself clean. Sometimes it feels like all I do is wipe bottoms. I dream of the day when mine is the only bottom I’m in charge of and I no longer have to ask the question, “Do you have to go potty?” 25 times an hour or play Russian roulette with my 8 month old little boy every time I change his diaper. But today is not that day.

We started potty training Ellie right after her second birthday. She had been showing signs that she was ready for months – telling me she went to the bathroom in her diaper, watching intently when I used the bathroom, asking to sit on the potty. Truth be told, the person who wasn’t ready was me. I knew that I was going to need to set aside several days where we didn’t go anywhere and just focused on the task at hand. As a working mama, I worried that we would make progress for the couple of days I’m home with her, but then I’d have to send her to childcare and she’d regress. Plus it didn’t seem right to make potty training my child someone else’s problem. I also like to be active and go do things with my kids. The idea that I’d need to stay home for several days without going to the park or the grocery store felt overwhelming. And honestly, even after reading several books and scouring blogs, I still felt ill prepared for how best to potty train her.

In the end, I bought it all. I bought the little seat. I bought the tiny duck potty that quacks when liquid hits the bottom. I let her pick out “Elsa panties,” but also bought the plastic covers too. I got thicker “training pants.” We got Pull Ups with her favorite cartoon characters. I made a sticker chart. We filled the candy dish with M&M’s. In true Meghan fashion, we were prepared.

In the end, it really wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it in my head. We stayed home for a few days, Ellie ran around without pants on (which she loved), and slowly but surely, she learned. Did we have accidents? All the time! Even 12 months later, she still has an accident every so often. But what I discovered is that’s really the worst of it. Just like any other major childhood transition, it’s always a lot scarier and harder in your head than in reality.

If anyone would like to hash out the details of the steps we used to potty train Ellie, I’d be happy to sit over coffee and laugh about this “fun” parenting milestone. But every kid is different, so instead of boring you with the step by step process we used, I’ve compiled a list of some potty training “hacks” and tips we’ve learned along the way.

1. If you’re thinking about potty training, but are afraid to start, look at your calendar, pick a week (or weekend) where you have little planned and can stay home, and write it on the calendar. For me, this wasthe hardest step. Then hold yourself to that date.
2. Throw a tiny potty in the back of your car and just keep it there. A lot of places have restrooms readily available, but parks often do not. Even if you’re sloshing poop down a hotel hallway and hoping no one notices, you’ll be glad you have it.
3. Put a package of Post It notes in your diaper bag. Ellie didn’t have much trouble going to the bathroom in public, but often got scared of the automatic flushers if it flushed while she was sitting there. A quick post it in front of the sensor does the trick.
4. Let your child pick out some fun stickers at the store and then give them one each time they successfully use (or in the beginning, try) the potty. If you buy a tiny potty, let your child “decorate” it with the stickers rather than using a potty chart. For Ellie, this was much more fun than sticking stickers on a piece of paper and then it made the potty “hers,” so she was more excited to use it. Win-win.
5. Buy way more M&M’s than you think you’ll need. For every one your child eats, you’ll need at least 5. And while you’re at it, stock the fridge with pouches that contain prune. And wine for at the end of the day when you sit on the couch and wonder what the hell you were thinking.
6. If you buy the plastic pants to go over your kid’s underwear, buy a size smaller than they’re marked. In my experience, those things run huge. I didn’t like them at all and never actually used them, but I have friends who love them.
7. Bring spare pants, underwear, and bribes everywhere you go. Put them in the glovebox of the car too. For the first few weeks, I also brought along a hand towel. You just never know when your child is going to urinate all over the floor in the checkout line at the grocery store.
8. We bought the tiny seat that you set on the adult toilet and found it to be helpful, especially when she needed to go #2 and was going to be sitting for a while. What I didn’t love about it was finding a good place to keep it when she wasn’t using the bathroom. A friend told me that the big box hardware stores sell a child toilet seat that attaches right to your regular toilet and can be lowered or raised whenever needed. Genius.
9. If you use the tiny potty, put a coffee filter in the bottom of it when you think your child might need to go #2. Makes clean up way lesstraumatic.
10. If you’re having trouble getting your kiddo to sit on the big potty for long enough to go, give them a dry erase marker and set them backwards so they can color on the toilet lid. It buys you like an extra 45 seconds to a minute. 🙂 Or, just give them the ipad. I’m not judging.

And finally, keep a sense of humor and be patient and forgiving of both yourself and your little one. Potty training is a major milestone, but like most transitions, it seems a lot scarier than it actually is. If you read a book (or twenty) that describes a certain method, know that your child may not fit perfectly into the “plan” the author describes and that’s okay. I’m all for researching, but in the end, the author isnot the one potty training your child, you are, so use your gut and if the book says not to do something, but you think it might help, then do it! Ellie did a “poop strike” about a week into potty training. Girl held strong for 5 days before she melted into a giant ball of weeping toddler. The book said not to put diapers on them once you start potty training, but I couldn’t watch her suffer anymore, so I gave her a prune pouch and threw a diaper back on her. We all slept better that night.

In the end, know that every mama starts potty training and has “oh shit, what have I just started?” moments. It will all be okay.

God speed, mama.