My son is 3.5 years old. He’s been in pull-ups since he was two. He’s been ahead of every developmental milestone his whole life – crawling, walking, talking, reading – you name it, he’s knocked it out of the park. But the potty? Nope! He is unbelievably stubborn about it. We’ve tried all kinds of different charts and rewards, and he couldn’t care less. The kid loves candy, but a lollipop will not motivate him to use the potty. He gets excited about a chart when it initially goes up, but then declares he does not care if he ever makes any progress on it. He doesn’t tell us when he has a dirty diaper and would sit in a poopy diaper for hours without a problem if we let him. It’s been driving me bananas. Why is this so difficult? Babies/toddlers pretty much figure out all the other important stuff in life with very little intervention from us. It amazes me constantly that a baby can figure out how to crawl then walk then talk by just hanging out and absorbing the world around them. And eating? How do they know to pick that bit of food up, put it in their mouth, and chew? Amazing! WHY doesn’t it work the same way for the potty?
I finally had a moment of crisis about being a terrible mother after another night of failing to get my 11-month old baby to sleep without rocking her (a story for another day) and changing yet another disgusting poopy diaper on my no-longer-a-toddler son. It was time! We are doing it! The next morning I stripped him. No more diapers. I told him that he’s too big for diapers and that’s the end of it! He spent a weekend naked from the waist down and holy moly it actually worked. The first day I regularly popped him on the potty whether he wanted to go or not. The second day he went by himself unprompted! Every time! On day three he had to go to daycare where unfortunately he had to put pants on, so we had a couple of accidents, but it still went so much better than I anticipated. Now we’re on day six and I cannot believe that the kid is actually doing it. He still has issues pooping in the potty at daycare (nerves, we think) and he still prefers to be naked at home, but otherwise, he’s a rockstar. For us, there was no waiting until he was ready since he was showing zero signs of that. No charts, no M&Ms, no stickers, no putting the potty in the living room. We just needed to take off his diaper and go for it. We did buy him small Lego sets after the first couple of poops in the potty, which was more than I wanted to spend on rewards, but hey. He’s earned it.
What was your experience with potty training? What worked (or didn’t) for you? Let us know in the comments! If you found it easy – share your secrets; if it was a nightmare for you, let’s commiserate together!
