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Here I will walk you through 7 Potty Training tips for Toddlers. These were the most helpful on Potty training my oldest toddler when she was two and a half. I asked other mom’s often, how they potty trained their children. I was often met with one of two responses. “You’ll know when they are ready, don’t force it” and “They just decided they didn’t want to be in diapers anymore and started going to use the potty”. Despite the first response being true your toddler will begin to show signs when they are ready), it wasn’t helpful and honestly the second response still makes me roll my eyes with irritation. So I am here to give you ALL the tea on Potty Training, there is no gate keeping here.
After reading the first twenty or so pages of “Potty Training in 3 days: The step-by-step for a clean break from diapers”, I decided I was going to give potty training a try. Despite not completing the book, I definitely would recommend it, the author shares tons of information that is extremely helpful and informative that gives you insight on why, when and how you potty train matters. What the book taught me was, when I would know my toddler was ready to potty train and that the longer my toddler stayed in diapers the more they would resist the process of potty training! That for me was enough to close the book and decide to start the prep to begin potty training the very next day.
7 Potty Training Tips for Toddlers
1. Prepare (Do the Prep work)
Before I tell you how I prepared to potty train, I want you to understand that if you want to succeed at anything in life, preparing tends to always give you the upper hand. For example, if I want to go from being a couch potato to running a 5k, I can most definitely just start running. I can almost guarantee though that if I do that, I’m probably not going to succeed. Potty Training a Toddler is no different, prepare yourself and your toddler for success. Don’t expect them to get the hang of it on the first try, you are preparing them to learn a skill they will use for the rest of their life, GIVE IT TIME.
My prep-work: First things first, I covered our rug like a Dexter crime scene, 
I did the same for our couch. I locked all bedroom doors because they are carpeted and set up the bathroom with all the essentials(I have linked items we used or the items most similar to it).
The Potty Training Essentials List:
This was helpful, for my little one to CONFIDENTLY learn to use the potty. Giving your child the ability to climb up and down off the toilet without you, is where the confidence comes and independence develops.
Having toddlers 14 months apart, This was a way to include my younger child into the potty training process, when big sister was using the potty. However, this did not work for my oldest toddler, because we made the mistake of placing the potty in the living room (thinking if it would encourage her to go to the potty whenever and wherever she needed to go). That didn’t work too well, she just started thinking it was a toy. Plus, you want to keep all potty behavior, peeing and pooping in bathroom!
Like mentioned before, the goal here is to build confidence, having a step ladder will help your toddler eventually be able to independently wash their hands! This is the goal!
You want high-quality training underwear for the day time, although these are kind of thick and resist leakage, they will leak if multiple accidents are made in them. That is a good thing, you don’t want your child to feel like they are in diapers but want them to become AWARE, of what and when their bod begins to show signs of needing to potty.
Smooth and easy clean up for poop!
I will talk about this further below but food coloring makes potty training FUN!
Encouraging the process with Rewards
Temporary Tattoos last longer on the body and are a visual reminder of an accomplishment they made.
Same point above but in a different design style
We read this book, before our potty training day and everyday while using the potty for the first week or two. It does a great job on showing the steps for using the potty but also reminds that accidents happen and you can try again!
Some children thrive off of seeing their progress, this is a fun way to be aware of how well your toddler is doing and a great visual for them to see their growth and be encouraged.
If the bathroom your child will be using doesn’t have a trash can, soap dispenser/soap and hand towel or paper towels. You will need to have those items as well in addition to toilet paper!
Side notes on preparation:
Other ways I prepared was by putting on episodes of different shows or songs talking about using the potty to help familiarize my child with the idea of using the bathroom. I also increased my own water intake drastically so that I had to use the bathroom more often throughout the day. Which allowed her to see that, this is what you do, when you are becoming a “big” girl!
2. Stick to the plan
Clear your schedule and remain focused on quality time with your child, when I mean clear your schedule, I mean this is not the time to attempt to do a grocery run or join a zoom call. Your time and attention is required. My potty training plan was to allow my toddler to run “free” through our home during her wake hours. Do you mean, run around butt naked? YES! Honestly, I thought it was crazy when I first heard of it but after attempting disposable pull-ups and then giving cloth training pants a try, I found that this might be the only way my toddler would truly understand what her body was doing and, IT WORKED.
I cleared our calendar, for the weekend and started potty training on a Thursday. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday we let her roam the house free of underwear, my children don’t care for clothes anyway so this felt like a win for her. The reason I believe the roam-free method works is because there is nothing to catch the pee or poop. My child could more quickly realize that her body was doing something even if she didn’t understand it.
3. Bare-bottom
Pull-ups have worked for many parents on potty training journeys but I found that they gave my toddler the OPTION to be a big girl or not. Often times, especially when her favorite show was on or she was playing with her toys she would choose to go in her pull-up. Cloth training pants were added to our potty training on Sunday afternoon, Day four.
Allowing our toddler to roam our home “Bare-bottomed” helped me to notice how my toddler behaved when she needed to use the bathroom. I could help remind her of where she needed to go and what she needed to do. My toddler also began to become aware of what it felt like for her body to need to release pee and poop in the first few days. These Bare-bottom days were beneficial and helped prepare her for when it was time to start wearing training pants.
4. Deep Breaths & Affirmations
By the fourth day of Bare-bottomed potty training, my toddler had understood the cues her body was telling her. I could easily recognize her expressions in regards to bowel movements. This is when we transitioned into wearing training pants. Having the Bare-bottomed training days allowed my toddler to focus on three things; understand their body, getting to the potty and learning what to do in the restroom. By adding in training pants we were adding in a new step to the original five-step process. Days 1 through 3’s steps were: Sit on the potty, wipe, flush, wash hands and then dry. Day 4 we added Pulling down underwear and pulling it up, technically two steps.
I found that this was where my patience began to wear thin, I was no longer, just mopping my floor but now I was mopping my floor and having to clean multiple pairs of underwear. The adding of the underwear was a new adjustment for my toddler and myself, so I had to remind myself to take a deep breath and affirm her. This felt like my child was either regressing or just being rebellious, but it was neither my toddler was learning that despite there, now being underwear the pee and poop still belonged in the potty. Remind yourself to affirm your child with words like “I know, you can make it next time”, “It’s okay, accidents happen”. Encourage them to try again.
5. Keep it Fun
If you read “food coloring” on my potty training essentials list, I’m sure you were like huh? Why? I put a few drops of food coloring in the toilet bowl to make the water look a fun color in between uses. My toddler would get so excited to see the different colors while using the potty which helped keep her interested. Also I would make up random cheers or songs up to help her feel supported. I can say the food coloring the toilet bowl lasted about a month but the singing and cheering was desired and requested for about four or five months! It goes by fast though so embrace this time to be silly and have fun encourage your child to grow into a “big kid”. Side note: Don’t ever dye the toilet water red (main reason you don’t want to forget and scare yourself!)
6. Rewards
As an adult, we quickly can forget how hard it is to be a child. So try to think about what would have helped you, to gain a new skill as a toddler. Rewards, uh! Yes! Along with a potty training chart to see progress, rewards are always a great incentive for learning something new. We used stickers in the beginning and then ventured into temporary tattoos! The stickers were fun but I would encourage you to have a notebook for your toddler to stick them in, or they might end up on the side of your tv console like ours did hahaha.
The temporary tattoos were a nice change for our little one when stickers weren’t exciting anymore. I know some parents use candy or sweets as an incentive for using the potty but in our home, we are intentional about what our children eat and don’t want to make any type of food a “reward”. Absolutely no judgement to any parent who uses food as a reward but I figured I’d share why we don’t just in case you wondered.
7. Repetition is key
Every trip to the potty remains the same, whether it be the bathroom at home, restaurant or grandmas house we always follow the same steps. Lights on, pull down pants/underwear, use the potty, wipe, pull up underwear/pants, flush, wash hands with soap and water, dry hands, turn off the bathroom light. When you keep the steps the same everywhere you go, it makes it easy for your child to adjust to a different scenery for the same task. Something we had to implement before using public restrooms was getting our toddler to understand underwear doesn’t have to come completely off or touch the floor. This is something I would practice, practice, practice at home to better prepare your child for other germ-y atmospheres.
I will focus on writing a traveling with a newly potty-trained toddler post in the next few weeks as I have some helpful tools I use to make trips to the grocery store and even road trips, a little less stressful.
I hope these tips help you to prepare and potty train your toddler during their wake hours, we are currently navigating through when and how to potty train for night sleep. When we overcome this challenge, I will be sure to share that TEA as well!
Happy Potty Training,
xx Classically Faith xx
