Parenting Toddlers

Sometimes, I am the only member of the household wearing pants.

My neighbor has a gorgeous little daughter who will be three in November. Peanut loves to play with her, and besides Peanut being super bossy and not liking to share as much as she should, they do a great job together. Anyway, they are in the process of potty training her, and she asked what we did to potty train Peanut. She also asked friends on Facebook. The big consensus was UNDERWEAR! Get em, use em.

When we were potty training Peanut, we tried a variety of things, which is good. You never really know what will work for your child until you try. And as we all know, what works on one day will not necessarily work on another. So we worked on it throughout the year she was two, and sometimes she wanted nothing to do with the potty at all. She could do it but just didn’t want to. I am a believer that when kids are ready mentally, they will do it without much fuss. This was the case with Peanut - but I was in a bit of a hurry because I wanted her potty trained before her brother came along. Diapering two kids is not budget-friendly! Anyway, finally, knowing that she could do it but choose not to, her father and I went to the store and bought packs of underwear. Packs and packs.

We came home, explained to Peanut that she was going to start wearing big girl underwear! YAY! How exciting! And it was when she saw the cute monkeys and stuff on her underwear. She put them on, all happy, and promptly peed in them. We put new underwear on her, and sure enough, a while later, she peed in them. So we put new ones on her (this is why we bought packs and packs!). The next day, she peed three times in her underwear, but we replaced them with clean pairs. After she saw that we wouldn’t give in and put a diaper on her, she stopped peeing. Just like that. Boom. Potty trained. It took about two days. We’d been leading up to it, but those two days were really the trick with her. (She wore a diaper at night for a few weeks beyond this - you’ll know when to start getting away from this when diapers are dry at night for several consecutive nights. Just make sure he/she goes potty before bed time.)

Toddlers will want to go back in diapers. It seems odd to us, but really, diapers are so good now that they wick moisture right away from the child’s skin. This is good for the little ones so they don’t get rashes, but not so good for toddlers. They don’t care if they pee, they can keep right on playing. When they feel wet underwear, however, it’s not so pleasant and they want to change back into the diaper so they can just play and not worry about going to the potty. Don’t do it! Don’t give them that way out. This is why I’m not a huge fan of pull-up diapers. Kids need to feel uncomfortable in order to get out of that habit.

Many people have their kids pick out their own underwear so they’re even more excited to wear them. This is a great idea and gives your toddler ownership of the process. We didn’t only because Peanut was at Grandma Day, which is a holy day here. So we did it for her, and it was fine. Do what you think is right. A surprise of packages of underwear with her favorite character will work just as well. A note: we went to a discount store and bought several packs. I’m not really into paying extra just so Dora can be on my daughter’s underwear. A generic rainbow or monkey or puppy works just as well for Peanut.

There are many different ways to potty train a child, but this is what worked for us and for other people I know.