Don't Lick Your Sister: Potty Training at One

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I promise you that I'm not bragging. I am proud though. How can I not be proud of the fact that my child saved me countless hours in the changing and cleaning of diapers?! I truly had very little to do with it though.The credit really goes to the child herself for making her wishes clear and the best potty cheerleader in the world - Big Sis - or as Amelia calls her, "Issy." And the book:

I found this book by doing an Amazon search and selected it because it cost less than $5 to buy on the Kindle. I read a quick review and was satisfied. I had no idea how much I would love this book!

Here's what I like about it:

Provides questions to determine your child's personality type and therefore the best learning style for them (and this style of teaching can go beyond potty training).
Provides median ages of achieving independent potty tasks for girls and boys separately and includes things such as wiping and hand washing (as well as normal ranges which helps me to not feel discouraged about night training).
It's all about a slow and steady wins the race potty training theory and this method does not require bribes of stickers, candy or anything else.
It taught me this mantra: There are 3 things in life that you cannot force another person to do: Eat, Sleep, and Go Potty!!!

I am no expert when it comes to potty training. Nether of my children are night trained and my youngest still requires a great deal of assistance. But she does stay dry (for the most part) all day in her big girl undies now. All we did was follow some of the tips and guidelines from the above book. This mostly included starting potty training by demonstration and discussing what's going on. Also, introducing the child's potty chair and sitting them on it even before they show any readiness signs. We did this starting at 12 months. I would suggest Amelia sit on the potty seat while I was getting her bath ready. Sometimes she was fully clothed while sitting there and sometimes she sat on it with the lid down. Sometimes I would forget to ask her to sit there and sometimes she wouldn't want to try at all. All of this was okay. It was a matter of starting to practice and beginning the habit of pottying during the night time routine. And there were lots of times she sat on the potty with her diaper off and the lid up and I knew this would eventually lead to her accidentally going while she was waiting for the tub to fill. At 18 and a 1/2 months she had her first accidental success. If only you could see the clapping, cheering and dancing that occurred from her Big Sister at this point. She had a few more accidental successes with her family doing the Potty Dance celebration each time. Then, by 19 months she started asking to sit on the potty and was typically having at least one purposeful success each day. And by 20 months she was either doing "naked time" or in training pants. A few days before she turned 23 months she nearly stopped having accidents. Here are a few things that helped our process:

In the beginning (at 20 months) I just kept her in her cloth diapers and baby legs. We were lucky she decided to start training during the summer so clothing could be limited. As she was asking to go more and more I decided I needed to transition to something that was easier than a diaper to take on and off. She mostly did "naked time" when we were at home but she needed to have something on when she was outside of the home. So, I created some home made (no sew!) training pants:

I just took the cloth g liner (from my cloth diapers) and folded them inside of big girl undies and then put plastic pants over top. We called these "training pants" to her since we didn't want to call them underpants (that way she knew when she was getting the real deal.

These worked extremely well to prevent leaks with the Gerber plastic pants over top. It was really only slightly less protection than a cloth diaper and much easier to pull on and off. I was still a little leery of putting her in the car in these though so I went with the most ridiculous cloth training pants ever made (also Gerber brand). They are all in one, quite absorbent, and seriously twice the size of a cloth diaper and look ridiculous with clothes over top of them but they are effective! These we called, "travel pants."

I also put a wet/dry pad in the car seat just because of my absolute fear of having to line dry the car seat cover on a work night.

I mentioned neither of my girls are night trained so they just wear disposable inserts in their g diapers and we call them, "sleep diapers." I must admit I dream of the day when we are 100% diaper free. But for now, I'm just going to be happy that we are one step closer!

Be sure to check out some of the pros and cons of potty training!