Potty Training: Episode I: The Advice Menace

Don't use Pull-Ups. Use Pull-Ups. Make your child go commando. Make your child pee in regular underwear; they don't like that. Don't leave the house until your child pees in the potty. Give them candy when they pee in the potty. Don't offer rewards. You can potty train in three days. It takes weeks to successfully potty train. Let the child explore sitting on the potty. Don't put out the training potty until you're actually going to potty train.

There is so much advice out there about the best way to potty train, from when to start to how to do it. And none of it is one size fits all. (Although I'm pretty sure "Force your child to do it" is just bad advice all around.)

All I want is for someone to tell me, "THIS is the way to potty train."

I've been waiting for my two-year-old daughter to show signs of readiness, which is pretty much the only consistent piece of advice I've heard. But I'm not sure how close to 100 percent we are.

A few months ago she asked to sit on the potty. It came out of nowhere! I had a training potty for her, but it was up in her closet and I hadn't shown it to her or talked about it at all. Still, she said she wanted to "sit on the potty". (Maybe it was something she picked up at daycare?)

I wasn't going to say "No" because what kind of message would that send? So I took the potty off the shelf, placed it on the bathroom floor, and let her sit on it.

She kept her pants on, tore some toilet paper off the roll, and threw it in, then wanted to wash her hands. We repeated this little scenario, usually with a flush of the big toilet and an, "I did it!", several more times over the ensuing months.

"Well, you flushed the toilet,"I told her. "You didn't pee in the potty." Just to be clear on what she actually "did".

The pediatrician said it was okay for my daughter to explore sitting on the potty. "Maybe she'll potty train herself," she said.

Of course, around the same time I read Oh Crap Potty Training, a guide for modern-day parents. I am apparently not a modern-day parent. This book tells me that I'm wrong to leave out the potty, that I can potty train her in three days (even though "days" is really more like stages/weeks, depending on the child), and that if my childcare provider won't allow my kid to show up with no underwear on, it would be best if I found a new childcare provider. Uhm, okay.

Throwing that book aside, I prepare my daughter for the day when we will start potty training by talking to her about it as often as I can - there will be sitting on the potty more, wearing special underwear (Pull-Ups) instead of diapers, and eventually wearing the Finding Nemo big girl underwear we picked out together at Target.

When I get her dressed or undressed, I ask for her help pulling her pants up or down, in preparation for her doing it herself when she goes potty. But all she says is, "No thank you." At least she's polite about it?

When we go to the bathroom at the neighborhood pool to change into our swimsuits and a little girl comes out of one of the bathroom stalls, I say, "See? That girl uses the potty like a big girl! Don't you want to be a big girl, too?"

"No, I'm little."

Sigh. Maybe she'll potty train herself?

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