Potty training is a critical life skill but it’s important to understand if you start too early you could be causing more stress, problems, and frustration than needed. If you think your child might be ready you can look for: staying dry for 2 hours at a time, noticing if the child is uncomfortable when wet or dirty, sitting for 2 minutes, pulling pants up and down, and if the child is comfortable with handwashing. If your child isn’t ready, it’s never too early to start pairing the bathroom and the toilet, introduce your child to the concept and get on the same page with the other adults in your child’s life with the words and terms you’ll be using.
I recommend following these four important steps: Extra Liquid, Scheduled Sits, Reinforcement, and Data. All of these play a big factor in the success of potty training. The extra liquid is going to increase the need to pee and practice on the potty and scheduled sits are going to build going to the potty into their routine. A high reinforcement your child doesn’t have free access to daily is crucial so they can see good things happen when they go potty, especially for poop. Lastly, tracking data is going to help you know when things are going right even if it might not seem like it, and it will also alert you when your plan isn’t working and you need to change it up.
Teaching, manding and requesting can be done during scheduled sits. Whether you’re using an image they can carry with them, saying potty on the walk to the bathroom, or signing for potty when they go potty all of these will get the child in the habit of telling you when they need to go. Fade the schedule away, and stop asking if they need to go!
In potty training, your goal is to get daytime pee trained first, if pee accidents are occurring then you need to readjust your schedule. Take the child to try peeing more often and look at your data to find out their usual natural potty times. For poop accidents, firstly if they are a boy remember to train them to pee sitting to avoid accidental pooping while standing. Also, check out my episode with Dr. Steve Hodges all about constipation and its effect on potty training.
