In reality, nothing can really prepare you for potty training. Yes, reading as much as you can on how to make the process as easy as possible does help give you an idea of what may or may not work for you. As with everything pertaining to kids, each child is different.
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We have been introducing the idea of being a big boy and wearing big boy underwear for almost a year now. We've never forced the idea on Michael, just brought it up every once in awhile to feel him out. I had bought a
Cars training toilet off of a Facebook yard sale page and bought some other training toilet seats at consignment sales about a year ago. That way we had them when Michael was ready. He's been interested in sitting on the toilet, but never did anything. If you don't have any consignment sales coming up or can't find anything through Facebook yard sale pages,
Amazon has a great assortment of potty training seats to choose from and at all different prices.
Almost a year ago, we took him over to the underwear section at Walmart to see if he was interested in picking any out. Yep, that's the selection at one of our Walmarts. A rather poor selection in my opinion.
Amazon actually has a pretty good selection if you don't want to venture to Walmart or Target.
He looked at it and seemed somewhat happy with the Disney Pixar pack.
Then he threw it on the ground.
He had a fit when we took one out so he could really see what they looked like. That was September last year. After that, we never really pushed the idea. Occasionally we would walk by the underwear and see how he would react. Nothing.
About a month or two ago, Michael started telling us that he wanted his diaper changed. Even within the past week, he has shown an increase in telling us he wanted or had already gone to the bathroom. So, with this increase in telling us to change his diaper I thought that we would take a trip to Target and have him pick out some underwear. A much better selection!
He picked out every pack that we purchased and I knew he liked them when he threw them in the cart instead of on the floor.
Tonka knows how to sell you on underwear, put a little Tonka truck in and skimp on the underwear. He wanted that truck so bad. He reminded me about it once we got in the car and I was about to pull out of the parking lot.
A few weeks later we bought a poster board at Walmart to make a potty chart. I grafted out the chart part of it and did some of the lettering. Since Jon is an artist and much better at drawing than me, I had him fix my lettering and he added his take on how the chart should look like. We told Michael that if he does really good and goes to the potty with no accidents for a whole month, that we'll take him to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate. He seemed really excited about that.
I bought three different stickers for the chart. The stars are to put on if he just sits on the toilet, the
Cars stickers are when he goes number 1 in the toilet (today he's gotten to put three of those on the chart!), and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse stickers are for when he goes number 2 in the toilet. To go along with the stickers and to reward him, he'll get M&Ms for going number 1 and mini Reese cups for going number 2.
So far it's been a slow process and I'll post more about it later. Hope this gives some ideas on just getting ready for potty training. What have you done to prepare your toddler?
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