Potty Training

Be patient with potty training, was everybody’s advice

Getting a toddler Potty Trained is a problem all parents face and at times it seems like a insurmountable task, there can appear no light at the end of the  ‘very long tunnel’, that is potty training your infant.

My daughter’s pediatrician told me to be patient, it was her second birthday and I was tired of ‘being patient’. I was tired of buying her diapers and pull-ups. She had absolutely no interest whatsoever, in potty training. Her idea of the bathroom was nothing more than it was a nice place to take a bath.

We had been working hard on potty training for several months, without really getting anywhere and we had tried everything that the so-called ‘experts’, were advising. My mother shrugged off the problem and told me that potty training would be something that will suddenly, ‘just click into place’ for her. She also said to me I must be patient. I was really getting tired of hearing that word.

We tried incentive (bribery) methods.

Our ‘daycare provider’, recommended that we use what she called "potty treats" to reward her. So I kept a small container of M&M's in our bathroom to use for bribery. These worked at first, the little colored candies seemed to encourage her tremendously. She would actually ask us for her potty treat, but usually she either didn’t quite make it to the bathroom in time’ or nothing actually happened when she got there.
We started out giving her one M&M, for simply sitting on the potty, and two M&M's if she actually did anything, while she was sitting there. But after a few weeks of eating a lot of candy but producing little results, its charms wore off. She and I, lost interest in M&M's.

Our toddler was not that interested in potty training!

Our potty training adventure, using bribery and cunning, seemed to have come to an end. We were just out of ideas. We received lots of potty training advice from almost everyone. Some of this advice seemed ‘completely off the wall’ and others made perfect sense, in either case it made very little difference.
 Ultimately the potty training decision and comfort would eventually come solely from my two-year old. She made it perfectly clear that potty training just wasn't to figure in her near future.

At last, suddenly, things changed!

Things went on for a further six months, with little or no change, then on the exact day that she turned two and a half years old, her best friend, at daycare, suddenly began to use the potty. This it seems was just the incentive she had been waiting for and my daughter announced that she too wanted to be a big girl and within a week, my potty training frustration had, thankfully, come to a complete end!

 Suddenly, it happened and it did ‘just click for her’. Mother, was as usual, was absolutely right, it was exactly as she predicted. It just needed to ‘click for her’!  I was utterly shocked that all of my efforts, time and energy  that I had spent on potty training had been a complete waste and all that I really needed to happen was for her to witness her daycare friend, “becoming a big girl”!

Success in potty training will come, have no fear! 

It is six months on now and she still wears ‘pull-ups’, at night just in case and to be safe. My grocery bill has decreased a bit and I am certainly very much happier. Now, I've become one of those moms that you see out shopping, who rushes their child to the nearest bathroom when they announce that ‘they have to go’.  I can put up with these mad dashes, simply because, thank goodness it means my potty training days are over!

For advice to any parent who is going through the ‘potty training period’, of an infants development. Remember this, it will happen, sometimes earlier than expected, other times later, but the individual child will ultimately decide.

As a parent just try to see things philosophically and bide your time, or as my mom said, “be patient”, don’t get too anxious and rest assured that things will, “just click for your baby”, and this particular problem will be over.