Potty Training Essentials and Update

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Update

Potty training has gone well for us! Of course there have been accidents here and there, but overall, 3 months in, I am happy we did it when we did and am confident that he was ready when we started.

You can read about our entire potty training experience here.

After the initial training, he has had relatively very few accidents. There were a couple of pockets of time that he had bigger regressions — once when grandma came to visit and once when we traveled away from home. But with reminders and lots of prompting, he was able to get back on track pretty easily.

All children are different, but what worked well for me was constantly prompting him to go, and having certain times of day when it was required that he at least try. This minimized accidents and allowed us to do outings and get out without having emergency situations. I just worked in potty times to our schedule very naturally. Before we go anywhere, he goes. When we return home, he has always been in the habit of washing hands, so adding potty before washing hands was somewhat natural. He also goes before nap and bed (but still wears diapers when sleeping just in case.)

Essentials

I told myself I was not going to get a portable potty to use at the park, but I ended up getting one because there was a beautiful day in February when I got both kids out to the park and then he told me he had to go potty so we had to head home. I was so sad and decided I was going to have to go for the “stroller potty“! It has been great, because the portable potty (pictured above) folds up small so I now carry it everywhere. It can be a stand-alone portable potty (I use a plastic bag as the potty basin — it comes with a few disposable liners but a plastic grocery bag works great!) or it can be a portable potty seat to put on top of a regular toilet. So as unpleasant as it is to carry it around everywhere, it has been a lifesaver in getting him to go potty on the go.

We have also been glad that we have a “living room potty“, which is just a stand alone portable potty that we can use anywhere in the house. This has been a lifesaver when I am trying to feed my 9 month old and my 2 year old says he has to go potty — no problem, the potty is right here! I bought the Summer Infant one because it was the best value at the time, but if you are shopping for one, double check the prices because they change a lot on potties and I don’t think the brand really matters at all.

For our bathrooms, we installed new toilet seats that have a built-in child seat. This makes our bathroom toilets ready to go anytime. These seats are more ideal for girls, but they work for our son. We just have had to teach him to be in the right position so that he doesn’t spray everywhere. He has learned quickly!

The other potty training essentials we have used are “big boy underwear” and Pull-ups (which I call “special big boy underwear.”) We went with plain white big boy underwear so we wouldn’t have a fight over what underwear he would wear each day… and it has been great. I use pull-ups sparingly but use them when there will be no restroom options (plane, subway, long car rides, etc…) He actually has never had an accident on those days which has been great. When he has bad accidents in the regular underwear, it is really a pain to clean, so using the Pull-ups if an accident seems likely makes clean up much easier.

And I think that’s pretty much it at this point — except for the benefits of installing a bidet…. both for yourself and your child, this makes clean-up easier. On our recent trip, my son was asking everyone why they didn’t have bidets on their toilets 🙂

Happy potty training!