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Okay, my son could not be anymore different than my daughter when it came to potty training. You can read about my journey with her here.
So, I started them both at the same time, back when they were 26 months. He wanted nothing to do with it. He went naked like she did, but would just pee everywhere. He has no tale tell sign or signal that he was going to go. He would just pee all over my hardwood floors. She moved on to underwear in a few days, he was still naked. So I took it as he wasn’t ready and put him back in diapers/pull ups.
Fast forward to the pandemic happening and his fast approaching 3rd birthday. I decided to give it another go. He fought me so hard on going naked. He was not having it at all. I ended up buying a tiny little urinal for him ( linked here and below) and that peaked his interest a little bit. He also started becoming obsessed with his Dad around this time too, so knowing he could go potty like daddy kind of helped. But it still wasn’t enough. So I stopped pushing him again. The he started trying to go potty every night before bed, like his sister. But during the day, he still was going in his pull up and not telling me.
Fast forward again, end of 2020, still stuck at home with the pandemic. I started to talk to him more and more about it. I started warning him that it was coming. January 2021 came, he’s 3.5 now and I said this was it. We talked about it all weekend. I kept telling him on Monday we were going to say goodbye to pull ups and hello to underwear. Monday morning rolled around, and he was ready, with his own demands 😆. He was not having the whole naked thing anymore. He wanted to wear his underwear with his pants. So I went for it and haven’t looked back.
Since he was wanting to keep his pants on, I had a hard time looking for signs he was going to go. I decided to set a timer. We have an Alexa device right in our kitchen and our home is open concept so we could hear it in our living room, which is where he plays most and our little potty is set up. I started with a 30 minute timer. He knew, once he heard it, he needed to stop and go try. He also didn’t stop everytime and I had to give many reminders. Day one, we made it on the potty 8 times and had 4 accidents. We still used pull ups at nap and bedtime. Day two, we made it 4 times and had 4 accidents. I played with the timer. I started setting it for 15 minutes but only getting very little pees or nothing. We went back to 30 minutes, and were getting more pee, but accidents would come too. Day three came and we hit the potty every time! Not one single accident. Day four, I bumped the timer to every hour and we hit the potty every time. On day five and six, he started telling me when he had to go, or would just go by himself. By day seven, I was no longer prompting him, he was going on his own. We had no timers set or any reminders. Also, to note, he was using a mix of sitting and standing at the normal potty, sitting on our little potty and using the toddler urinal.
After that first week, he was done, in my eyes. He was going all on his own and didn’t need a timer or me reminding him anymore. He actually has almost night trained himself too. He has started walking up dry every day from nap (if he still naps 😩 I’m not ready to lose naptime) and he’s starting to walk from bed most mornings dry.
I had put this pressure on myself because the book said that after 3 is so hard to train. I felt like I was going to make this harder on myself the longer I kept waiting. I was also worried because everyone says “boys are harder than girls”. When in reality, I just needed to wait for him to be ready. All the books out there are great guides. I think it’s important to remember that every child is different and has their own personality. They will potty train, relatively easy, when they’re ready. I promise, you won’t be in diapers forever. Though, I’m not completely out of the woods yet, I’m getting so close. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Good luck! You’ve got this!
Link: Frog Toddler Potty