Family Life

Preparing for Potty Training

Kay just turned two last month. That means it’s about that time to start preparing for potty training! Even though I’ve done it once before, I’m still looking forward to this with equal amounts of anticipation and dread. The idea of her being out of cloth diapers is exciting but kind of sad at the same time. My baby is growing up!

2 years old!

I’m looking forward to not having to deal with dirty diapers anymore, but the learning period means a lot of clean up and patience. And to be perfectly honest, I’m going to miss discovering new diapers, testing them, and blogging about them. Though I guess we’ll have some time with cloth trainers before it all goes away!

Kids need to be developmentally physically and cognitively ready before starting the potty training process. Kay has started showing these typical signs of readiness in in the last couple of months:

  • She often tells me when she needs to poop, and she has definite signals for when she does her business. (We’ve started calling the area behind the couch “Pooh Corner”.)
  • Shes been holding her pees for longer and longer periods of time and occasionally wakes up from her naps dry.
  • She definitely wants to do things on her own. Her anthem the last couple of weeks has been, “Do self! Do self!”
  • She can follow instructions, and she understands and says “pee”, “poop”, and “potty”.
  • She’s very interested in what goes on in the bathroom and loves to flush the toilet when we’re done.

NextStep built-in potty seatA few weeks ago we broke out the potties. We have two identical red high back potty chairs, one for upstairs and one for downstairs, in order to keep things consistent between bathrooms. Hubs installed this awesome built-in potty seat in the upstairs bathroom (perfect because Tee shares the bathroom too). Kay likes to sit on the potty, though she’s only “succeeded” a few times. I’m hoping that having an older sister will help motivate her to go on the potty like a big girl.

Back when Tee was two, she was making steady progress towards being toilet trained until her little sister was born, and then not surprisingly she refused to have anything to do with the potty for the next 6 months. This time around, there are no plans for a younger sibling to come along so I’m hoping things go a little smoother. I don’t have a firm deadline in mind, but I’d sure like her to be out of diapers by next September when she starts preschool.
 
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7 Comments

  • This is actually really helpful, thank you.
    We’re still expecting #1 but I’ve been wondering how the whole process goes and what we can do to prepare. Most of my younger siblings basically potty trained themselves at around 2 so I don’t really know what to expect and what age is normal or realistic.
    Do you use cloth training pants or some other method?

  • I love that you are following your child’s cues for potty training readiness instead of picking an arbitrary age to potty train. So many people force it too early and end up with nothing but tears and frustration. Good luck, mama!

  • “Pooh corner” is too funny. My toddler makes a cave-like fort in our bedroom, even closes the door. lol
    We’ve got a lot of signals that it’s time here…I’ve never been one to rush this process. It happens when it happens. We’ll get the potty this week, and kinda wing it.

  • We are at the same stage as you. My youngest turned 2 this summer and we are jumping into potty training. Whenever Helen goes off to play alone we know it’s time for a potty (#2) break. My big thing on potty training is to not stress about it; like Laurie P commented, “It happens when it happens.” I stressed about way to much with my 1st. She was showing all the signs of being ready at 18 months and was (seemingly) fully potty trained 3 times in the next 18 months and then would just decide she didn’t want to be (or something) and would go back to never going in the potty…It took until a week before her 3rd birthday to have her actually trained.
    We tried elimination communication for a few months with my youngest but ended up not being home enough to fully commit. However, I think that because she’s used the potty on and off since a few months old she has an understanding of what to do