Potty Training, without the training…

Austin turned three in February. 
He’s been potty trained for about a month. 
Wanna know a secret?
There was no training involved.
There was no stress.
I kid you not.
We just switched him to underwear one day and that was pretty much all it took.
We weren’t asking him to potty every 20 minutes. We didn’t have to sit him on the potty and will him to pee or poop. He wore diapers at bedtime for the first week, and then he was a full-time underwear wearer. 
Guess how many accidents he had?  Maybe a total of 4. And most of those were because a bathroom wasn’t readily available. And I never once had to change soaked sheets in the middle of the night.

How’d I do it?
Well, there’s three things you should know:

1. Let them potty outside. It’s true. I let him drop him pants to potty in public. Whether we were playing in the yard, or in a parking lot, or camping… If he had the urge to go, I let him. We’d find a tree to go behind, or a grassy, woodsy area at the end of the parking lot, or while camping we actually dug him a hole and found a rock for him to sit/lean on… Of course, always clean up after your child, but if a potty isn’t available, the great outdoors always is. (Don’t forget to stash baby wipes and plastic bags in your car. And hope there’s a trash can nearby…)
2. Do we really need pull-ups? No. But I did buy a child-size potty. I was going to stock up on pull-ups. I thought they were a must have for potty training. Turns out they’re not. It’s personal preference.
We opted not to buy them and just go straight for the underwear. Smart move, cause our money would have been wasted on pull-ups that stayed dry.
Again, a small potty is a personal preference. The one we bought is shaped like a frog.
When I first started researching potty training around Austin’s 2nd birthday, there was no way I was buying a little potty. I didn’t get the point. I thought it was gross.
When we went shopping for underwear (Spiderman and Diego, of course!), we bought the frog potty because it was only $10.
Austin was able to go potty when he needed to, without help. It was a wonderful time saver for me and he loved not needing help.
The first few nights in underwear he cried because he didn’t want to potty in his bed. We moved his frog potty into his room for those few night, and he was able to get up and potty if he needed to. His peeing-the-bed fears are gone, and the frog potty is back in the bathroom.
3. Trust that you know your child and that you’ll know when (s)he’s ready to potty train.
I took the boys home for a month this spring, and was told by a family member, that because I hadn’t potty trained Austin yet, she would do it for me. I simply replied, Thanks for the offer. But he’s really not ready. When I asked why he wasn’t wearing the pull-ups she bought, she laughed and said, “Oh, he’s not ready.” Hmm… I could have told her that!   
Ann, from Household 6 Diva, kept telling me that he wouldn’t go to Prom in diapers. It’s the best parenting advice I’ve ever recieved.  What’s the rush? I’m a stay at home mom. My children don’t go to daycare. When I realized there wasn’t a rush, I stopped worrying that my 3 year old was still wearing diapers. If he was content in diapers, I was content to change them. (It helped that we use cloth diapers, and there wasn’t a weekly diaper expense.)
So we waited… for what seemed like forever. Finally, at 3 years, 4 months old, we decided to give it a shot…

Above all else, do what works for you and your child and remember every child is different. If waiting until after your child’s 3rd birthday, makes you (or your child) bananas… Don’t do it. If your child is driving you crazy at age 2, and you want to put them in pull-ups… Do it.
But only if makes sense in your life and puts a smile on everyone’s face.

Do you have stress-free potty training tips?  Share them with me… because Cade will be 2 in October… and I can only hope he’ll potty train like Austin did.


This post is linked to "Three Things You Should Know" Thursday.