Anecdotal Stories From Unconventional Potty Training

        Are you surprised that, like every other area of my parenting, my potty training is unconventional? I’m sure you’re not. The approach I take to potty training is more of a marathon than a sprint, but it’s less poopy diapers and sooner potty training. Downside, it’s a lot of cleaning up pee off the floor.

       I read the book “Go Diaper Free” when I was pregnant with Stella. It’s about the idea that in some parts of the world, and before diapers were a thing, babies communicate when they need to use the restroom and then their parents take them.  Babies don’t like to soil themselves, it goes against their instinct. It talks about how babies will fuss before they go to let you know they need to go. We’re actually training them to use a diaper, which is why it’s so hard to then re-train them to use the potty. The term coined for it is “elimination communication.” I know, it sounds a little hokey. Admittedly, I did not start from the time that either of my kids were newborns, it felt like too much work to me. I did it a little bit when Stella was a newborn but then I started having mental health issues, (see my Post Partum… Seratonin Syndrome? Blog post) then we moved to Ohio and were living with Jakob’s grandparents. We moved into the house we’re in now when she was 11 months, and I started taking her to the potty then. With Elliot, I certainly didn’t have the time or patience to try it with him while having two under two. When he was 11 months we started as well. According to one article I read, 95% of children were potty trained by 18 months. I totally believe that, but neither of mine were. I believe that had more to with my inconsistency than their inability, though. I think it also had to do with the fact that we leave the house a lot more than people did in the 1950’s, it would be much easier to potty train a child who’s home all the time rather than leaving the house multiple times a day.

        I’m going off the notes I made in Stella’s baby book to recount her potty training journey.  When I started her off I just had her naked around the house. There was a lot of peeing on the floor, I definitely remember that. I set up a mini potty in the bathroom and had books in there for her. She took to going in the potty rather quickly, but she didn’t tell me when she had to go. According to her baby book at 12 months she was already going right when she woke up from naps. If the timing worked out and she had to go when I took her in there, she went. If she had to go any other time, she went where she was. Poop, though, was another story. Again, I’m not sure how long it took, but I feel like relatively quickly because I don’t remember cleaning  messes on the floor, we worked out cues for pooping. Her baby book says at 12 months I’d figured out her poo stance already but we weren’t perfect about getting to the potty every time. She would start grunting to let me know she had to go, I’d take her to her potty, and read her books while she went. She generally went the same time everyday so that helped too.

        At 13 months I wrote that she was doing very well, then regressed. At 14 months I wrote that I was tired of pee on the floor so we were taking a diaper free break but that almost all of her poops were in the potty because she’d say “mama” then grunt to let me know when she had to go.  Apparently at 15 months I was in the bathroom peeing and she crawled in, sat on the potty, peed, then crawled away. I wrote that we were getting more pees in the potty and pretty much all poops. She also started wiping herself at this age but apparently she was taking the toilet paper with her afterwards at first instead of putting it in the potty.

        By 17 months she was almost fully potty trained, but still needed help pulling her pants down and up and getting on and of the mini potty since she was so small. She also likes to sit there and read for 20+ minutes after she went. She still wasn’t telling me when she had to go but she would at least try and go if she needed to every time I took her, including when we were out. Being 8 months pregnant, it was too hard for me to bend down with her anymore to help her so I stopped taking her and just had her use diapers all the time.

        I had planned l just wait until Elliot was around a year and she was 2.5 to tackle potty training again but she started taking off her diaper and going in the mini potty at home by herself at about 21 months. She pretty much quit wearing diapers at home at that point but we still wore them when we went out because I didn’t want to deal with taking her to the bathroom while we were out and juggling helping her and a 3 month old.

        Around 2 Stella found out she had a hole through self exploration and we started having issues with her wanting to put things in said hole. Something I never thought I’d have to worry about, but I guess that’s what you get for letting your kid spend most of their home life naked. I ordered her some underwear and that put an end to that. In October of last year, one day she went potty before we left the house and I asked her if she wanted to wear her undies to wherever we were going. She said yes and so I decided to just tackle it full on and see how it went.

        It went really smoothly. We would always go before we left wherever we were and she was telling me if she had to go other times. If I didn’t take her before we left somewhere she would usually have an accident in the car. I quickly got sick of washing the car seat so we started doing “carseat underwear.” I took one of her of her cloth diaper covers and put it over top of her clothes every time we got in the car. If she had an accident I had to change her clothes but the car seat stayed clean.

        Stella doesn’t wear carseat underwear anymore, and sometimes that means pulling over and letting her pee in the grass on the edge of some random parking lot. For a long time we had her wear a diaper if we were going to be driving an hour like to the zoo, but lately we’ve gone away with that since she had no issue communicating if she needs to go. We do still have her wear a diaper if we’re driving on vacation so we don’t have to deal with stopping or her to go to the bathroom, or when we flew recently we had her wear a diaper as well. (See my travel tips blog post for other travel ideas!) She still wears a diaper during nap time and overnight, not so much because I don’t think she’s capable of going without one but because she sleeps in our bed and I don’t want to deal with having to wake everyone up to change the sheets if she does have an accident. Because Elliot was still in diapers, we did have some issues with her wanting to wear a diaper to be like Elliot. That was actually the impotis to fully potty train Elliot this month, because we were tired of fighting Stella about the fact that she didn’t need to wear one.

        When Elliot was 11 months I decided to start having him go diaper free to see how it went. I do very clearly remember him pooping on the floor day one because I found him eating it. Which yes, was as horrifying and disgusting as it sounds. And yes, I will be holding that over his head when he’s older. Regardless though, he too pretty quickly took to pooping in the potty. At 11 months he was actually telling me “big poop!” when he had to go poop and I’d take him. This was only at home, but he usually went about the same time of day like Stella did so that made it easier.

        Elliot’s now 22 months and over the last 11 months we’ve had a lot of pee on the floor, but very little poopy diapers or acccidents to deal with which has been a huge pro. It was a lot of back and forth, we’d have weeks where he was doing great and then weeks of regression. I think a lot of that was on Jakob and I.  Neither of us was consistent about taking him when we were home, and we weren’t consistent about having him not wear a diaper at home. He never really knew if he was supposed to go in the potty or not because half the time he had a diaper on and half the time he didn’t.

        Last month I decided I wanted to cut the cord and try fully training him and see how it went. I figured if it was a huge disaster we could just go back to diapers. We waited until after we got back from vacation and had settled back in then one day I just quit putting diapers on him.  I had him naked at home and had him go commando when we left, because I’d heard that was the easiest transition. I set a timer for 30 minutes and bribed him with a book to try when it went off, and when we left the house we’d try when we got somewhere, every 30 minutes while we were there, then before we left.

        The first day we went without diapers we had a playdate at a local indoor churches playground. When we got there Elliot was refusing to sit on the big potty. I knew he had to go becasue it’d been so long since he’d gone that morning, so I finally convinced him to sit there by singing him a song. After the song was over he was squirming to get down even though he hadn’t gone yet and I was racking my brain for how to get him to stay seated. I finally exclaims, “Elliot, look at your penis and watch the pee come out!” Well, that worked and now every time he goes he looks down and too exclaims, “pee  pee come out!”

        After a few days I realized he actually did better wearing underwear at home. He didn’t want to get his underwear wet but had no qualms with peeing on the floor. He, in fact, very much enjoyed helping me clean up the floor afterwards. A little too much apparently. He was so used to me pushing his penis down so the pee didn’t shoot out onto the floor, he now holds his penis down when he goes.

        After putting underwear on him, he went down to one accident a day. Towards the end of the first week we had made it though an entire day without an accident and it was almost bedtime, he didn’t have underwear or a diaper on because I was about to put a diaper on him for bed, when he went to do a sumemrsalt and proceeded to pee in the middle of it. I couldn’t believe he didn’t pee on his own face.

         Around a week after starting we were at the point where I didn’t have to bribe him to go sit down and try, I’d just ask him if he had to go and if he did he’d run to the bathroom. Around two weeks he started telling us when he had to go, which made out lives much easier. We were out on a walk one night, after dark, looking at Halloween lights in our neighborhood, when he told me he had to go.  We were too far from the house to rush back so I took his pants off him and had him squat down in someone’s front hard to go.  In all fairness, it was in the area between the sidewalk and the road. Gotta do whatcha gotta do when you’re potty training, ya know? (Even when we’re outside I have Elliot squat down because I do not want him learning he has the option to stand and trying to do that at home over the potty and making a mess. I’ve also made it clear to Jakob he either sits down to pee or shuts the door so Elliot doesn’t try to follow his example.)

        It’s been 3 weeks now and we still haven’t actually had an accident free day, but I feel like one accident a day at 22 months is pretty good.  At first the accidents were because he wasn’t going all the way when I took him. He’d go half way then hold some of it and have an accident 10 minutes later. Extremely frustrating, if you were wondering. Now the accidents are usually in the car becasue I forgot to take him before we left wherever we are. Thank you car seat underwear! Sometimes they’re becasue he’s just busy playing and doesn’t realize he has to go until it’s too late so I do still try to prompt him when I think about it. When we’re out I do take him more often because I’m paranoid he’ll be too busy and not want to stop what he’s doing to go, then have an accident. I make sure he always tries before we leave wherever we are. I was waiting around for sometimes 20-30 minutes reading book after book after book while he sat on the potty before we left the house for him to go but I’ve given up on that and accepted that it’s a waste of time. If he has to go he’ll go, if not he’ll wait till we get where we’re going.

        Today (the day before this is posted, so Elliot is 22 months) we were driving to the farm to get raw milk when Elliot said “mama, pee pee!” I asked him if he’d had an accident and he said yes so I didn’t pull over since we were almost there. When we got there I got him out and took off his car seat underwear to find he was still dry. We went to bathroom there and he went. While I was inside shopping he told me again he had to pee so I took him again. Later that day on the way home from Lowe’s he again said “mama, pee pee!” So I pulled over and got him out and he went in the grass on the side of the Aldi’s parking lot. We still haven’t had a day accident free yet but him telling me he has to go in the car so I can pull over is a huge step! Stella took much longer to stop having car accidents.

        Potty training Elliot has definitely been much more entertaining than potty training Stella, maybe that’s just becasue all the funny stories are fresh in my mind since we’re in the midst of it. I don’t know if Jakob would consider our potty training experiences smooth, because he gets a little more bent out of shape about cleaning up pee off the floor than I do, but I’d say overall they’ve both been smooth. I do think it’s ironic that I spent last October and this October potty training. Evidently, must be a good time of year for it. I guess I’d rather deal with more pee accidents and have less poopy diapers to change and overall be done sooner rather than waiting until they’re older and it being a quicker process. That’s just me though, I know that’s definitely not how everyone would prefer to do it.

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