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Potty Training Works When It’s Fun!

The day will come where you will look at your child in amazement and with pride realizing something has clicked. Something has registered. Your child has initiated - with no reminder - going to the potty.

The secret to potty training is a no pressure atmosphere where children believe they are in control and making the decisions. We guide their decisions and make it fun.

Three favorite tips from my book My Potty Activity Book +45 Toilet Training Tips: Parent/Child Interaction with Coloring and Creative Fun are:

#25) Read potty-related books any time to introduce the potty idea and continue reading them while training. Also, reading books (potty-related or just a favorite) on the potty will add to sitting time, relax your child, and increase chances of success.

#27) Play potty while training a stuffed animal or doll. Use your child’s future underwear on the animal. Because the underwear is big, it will be easier for your child to teach pulling pants down and up. Play house and pretend with your child. You be animal’s mommy. Feed the animal, make it run to the potty, pull pants down, sit, maybe read a book to it, praise it for trying/accomplishing, wipe, pull pants up, flush and wash hands. Play again. Let your child be Mommy and take the animal through the steps with you offering corrections if needed. Repeat. Devoting time here with excessive repetition may bore you but provides great instruction for your child. Review our tips for things to spice it up: accidents, songs, rules, or visiting.

#29) Set your watch or kitchen timer to beep every hour. Take your child when it beeps. It reminds you how long it has been since the last trip and can be fun for your child. My second child loved to scream, “Beep beep, gotta go!” It also avoided accidents by reminding me while I was cooking, folding laundry or focusing on another task.

After training three children, I have learned to use many means to make toilet training fun from incorporating crayons with tasks in the activity book to designing reward stickers with toilets, sinks and toilet paper on them (found in My Potty Reward Stickers for (Boys/Girls): 126 Stickers and Chart to Motivate Toilet Training).

I always try to laugh which is sometimes very hard but at other times takes no effort at all.

We are a traveling family and grew fond of taking our small potty in the car. We would line it with a plastic bag and we could stop anywhere on the road to let our child go. (Remove the plastic bag, tie it up, drop it in a roadside trash and line the potty again for next time.) Tip: Be sure your bags are sealed. On an extremely windy day, I don’t think I ever laughed so hard watching my husband, who was the one emptying, struggle in the wind with a leaky bag! Despite his smiling too - it really was no fun!

© 2000 Tracy Foote, work at home mother of three & toilet training author at TracyTrends.com