If you’re struggling with potty training, you’re not alone. Here are some solutions to common issues I’ve seen in the past 13 years potty training.
- Skip the small potty on the floor. I’ve never used these small potties when toilet training kids. It adds an extra step and the risk of mess is too high for me. Lots of people use them and love them but if you’re on the fence about it, don’t feel like you have to use it.
- If you’re in the very beginning stages and you can’t even get your child in the bathroom, then fade them in very slowly to start. Use a favorite activity as a special reward. You can have them walk in the bathroom and walk right back out and then slowly increase the time they spend in there. You can do the same thing for sitting on the toilet. Have them sit on the closed toilet, clothes on. Then open toilet with potty seat with clothes on, and so on until they are sitting without issue.
- Example: Have your child sit on the toilet with the lid closed with a tablet for a couple minutes for a couple days. Then, have them sit with clothes on on the potty seat.
- Does your child refuse to pee or poop on the potty but does as soon as the pull up or diaper goes back on? This one sound silly, but cut a hole in the pull up/diaper, then put it back on, and sit them on the potty. You can gradually make the hole bigger and bigger until you can fade it out completely.
- Keep a special reward that they only get for the potty. This keeps the motivation high.
- Are you taking them on a tight schedule, but they are still having some accidents? You may need to increase the time between taking them. It sounds counterintiutive but if your child is having 1-2 accidents a day when they had been doing well, increase the schedule by 10 or so minutes and see if that helps.
- And lastly, just because your child isn’t potty trained in 3 days does not mean you’ve done something wrong. I know very few people who have actually completely potty trained their children in 3 days.