How Google Home, Rewards and Avoiding Pinterest Helped Us Potty Train

Adventures in Potty Training

Rhett, oh Mr. Rhett I knew you would eventually be potty trained but you did not make it easy on us, until you finally decided it was time and then honestly it wasn't too bad! Read on to find out how we FINALLY potty trained this sweet boy who wanted NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING to do with anything related to the potty, underwear, leaving the diapers or being a "big boy" before or after the twins arrived.

Potty Training is not fun. We were pretty spoiled with Hattie, she basically potty trained herself when she was 2 and a couple of weeks before Rhett was born. At first I was pretty nervous about it happening so close to when he was going to arrive and trying to manage both things. But, I didn’t have a say and when she was ready, she was ready! I don’t remember too much from it all other than she had minimal accidents, and gave up diapers at nap and night time pretty quickly. I can remember putting her to bed one night and she just looked at me and said “no more diapers, I not a baby” and I decided to just test it out. She had been waking up dry from bedtime for so many nights in a row that I figured it would be okay and sure enough it was! *knock on wood* we have never had a pee accident in the middle of the night or the next morning to add to our laundry pile. We have had several 2:00 AM bloody noses though so don’t think we have gotten off scot free on the unplanned laundry and changing sheets department. So now it was Rhett’s turn. When he turned 2 we kinda laughed at ourselves for even talking about it, he was nowhere near ready, showing zero signs and had absolutely no interest in anything to do with the potty, diapers and his speech wasn’t all that great at two either. So, we decided it would only stress us all out if we attempted to force him when he was nowhere near ready. Fast forward another year (yes, an entire year). The twins were born, he was still in diapers. We would talk to him about wearing big boy underwear and going on the potty every single day. We wouldn’t say it too many times in one day, but definitely asked him if he was ready every day. And every day he told us “no thanks”. We tried everything, having him pick out underwear (minions, he was pumped) but that didn’t work. We had him pick out candy as a reward...Mike and Ikes, suckers, Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish and a few others all didn’t work. And then it happened…….one day, a Wednesday to be exact. I asked Rhett, just as I had every single day for the better part of a year, “Hey! Do you want to wear big boy underwear today?” and HE SAID YES! Hattie and I stopped what we were doing, looked right at each other and right back at him and said “What? Really?” And that was that. Patience my friends is what we practiced when it came to potty training this boy of ours.

Now, how did that potty training go you might think? Well, not horrible honestly. It of course came at a time where he had school the next two days, had no choice but to go out in public for his sister’s gymnastics class and I refused to just go back to diapers to be convenient for me. So here is how it all played out with a few helpful tips along the way….

Right away we put him in his underwear. He loved it! He wanted NOTHING to do with actually sitting on the toilet which made me a tad nervous because the underwear going on was only half the battle. He needed to actually go on the potty to be a success. So I decided to load him up with Gatorade, milk, water and juice and see what happens. Luckily he FINALLY got on the potty, very reluctantly might I add. He sat there for what seemed like FOR-E-VER and didn’t go. So we tried watching a show on my phone to pass the time and we did this for around 20 or so minutes. Then I realized how uncomfortable that had to be just sitting there on his poor little legs. So I had him get up. At this point he finally decided that gummy bears were his candy of choice to have as a reward. I decided every time he at least attempted to go to the bathroom he would get one gummy bear, if he actually went potty 2 gummy bears and if he went #2 he would get THREE gummy bears. So I started giving him gummy bears every time he tried to go and eventually he actually went on the potty!

**Disclaimer, we ended up switching from gummy bears because I failed to read the fine print and did not buy the sugar free and he was bOuNcInG off the walls. We were attempting to go potty so many times, he was putting those bad boys away. We switched over to M&M’s and only saved the gummy bears for the big one...the #2. Luckily he seemed totally okay with this since he was excited about picking out the colors of M&M’s each time.

As I am typing this, it really wasn’t even more than a month ago that this happened and I can honestly tell you I don't remember too many accidents. Maybe it’s my twin mom brain, selective memory or he really didn’t have that many but in those first few days we were pretty excited. He continued the M&M reward system at school and did great. He continued to wear a diaper at naptime and bedtime, but for the longest time he has been waking up completely dry from both of those even before the potty training officially began. And as of the middle of January he is no longer wearing diapers at nap or bed! Can I get a “Whoop Whoop!!!”?

Anyway, enough about our process to potty training, here are some of my top tips that helped us with potty training our 3 year old boy:

Pinterest Doesn’t Always Help

I felt like I read every single blog post, article and infographic imaginable about tricks for potty training. Rhett wanted NOTHING, I mean NOTHING to do with even sitting on the potty. Most of the ideas I came across did not help us one bit and it frustrated me because I thought Pinterest was my go to for the answer to most of my problems. I suppose learning that it doesn’t always help was key. Every child is different and in our case waiting it out is what he and we needed.

Rewards Are A Beautiful Thing

I am a fan of rewarding my children. There, I said it. Now, don’t get me wrong they absolutely do A LOT, and I mean it when I say this A LOT of things without being rewarded with anything. Sometimes not even a verbal affirmation, even though I try to at least thank them or tell them they did a good job with whatever the task was, BUT, when it came to potty training I knew we needed to have more than just happy thoughts and words to help steer us in the right direction. We went through several different rewards until we finally found something that worked, but trust me they worked. We tried several types of candy, stickers and snacks and eventually ended up on M&M’s and Gummy Bears. We are no longer having to use them when he goes to the bathroom. Occasionally we still reward him when he goes #2 because let’s face it, that is a huge win in all parenting views and I will continue to celebrate that success every single time!

Poop 
(Yeah, I couldn’t come up with a more clever title for this one)

It's a post all about potty training, I couldn't NOT have a picture of this emoji right?

Earlier in this post I talked about how he didn’t have too many accidents. Well, I need to clarify that. He did not have too many potty accidents. We were definitely not so lucky with “the other”. However, I am happy to report that we found something that has seemed to have helped. In addition to his daily multivitamins that he takes before bed, we have added in a Children’s Probiotic. After a couple of days of taking this, he has seemed so much more regular, he can tell several minutes before he has to go that he needs to go and the accidents have basically come to a screeching halt (knock on wood, seriously please knock on wood so I don’t jinx it). I am not 100% sure if he has just learned more about the process and understands what he is feeling, if it’s all thanks to the probiotic or a combination of both. What I can tell you is that once he started taking it, he did a complete 180 in that department and we are ever so grateful.

Google Home FTW 

(“For The Win” for those of you that don’t know text lingo)

This was a game changer my friends. Being a busy mama to four kids under the age of 5, I found myself struggling with remembering to ask Rhett if he needed to try. Being new to potty training he wasn’t able to know in advance if he had to go. Enter Google Home. For the first couple of days I would ask Google to set a timer for anywhere between 2-20 minutes depending on how much liquid he had drank so far, when the last time he went potty was and what we were doing. All I had to do was say “Hey Google, set a timer for 2 minutes” and that was it. I didn’t have to physically do anything. Just speak, which I am clearly good at. After the set amount of time, the timer would go off and he began to learn as soon as he heard the alarm it was time to stop what he was doing and try and go. Now that he is way better and able to tell us he has to go potty, we don’t use it nearly has much. But we do use the timer for other things like countdown to nap time, dinner time, bath time, end of iPad time, clean up time and so on.

PATIENCE

The biggest, and I mean biggest thing I can tell you is to not stress about it. I really, really did not want to have him in diapers when the twins arrived but he was showing and verbally telling us no signs of being ready. If I ever tried to put him on the potty before the glorious day that he decided he was ready, he would scream and cry and seemed so afraid of the toilet. It just wasn’t worth the battle, stress, tears or fight. I kept telling myself “he won’t go to kindergarten in his diapers” but as the days ticked on the fear of that actually happening kept creeping in. Even though we were patient in waiting for him to be ready, we kept reminding him about the bathroom, not needing diapers anymore, reading books about potty training, showing off his big boy underwear and so much more every single day in hopes that it would happen. Our patience proved to work and I am ever so thankful that we waited and did not press the issue too soon. Let’s hope I am able to practice this same patience when we are potty training TWO children at the same time a couple of years from now….oh my.