Discussion Forum

Take a look in our forum to see what everyone is talking about today! If you would like somewhere to get advice or just have a general chat then why not join us.

Work from Home

Working from home? Visit the Work from Home Section on our Forum where you will be able to get advice and talk to others in a similar position.

Mumszone Auctions

We have recently added a new Auctions facility to the site. Create your own store and sell your items , or come and take a look at items already available to buy.

Home arrow Read our Articles arrow Parenting Articles arrow Potty Training My Way
Potty Training My Way
Written by Administrator   



Potty training doesn’t have to be scary/traumatic/difficult/mystical!

Ok, as a nappy maker/seller you would think that it would be in my interests to see babies/toddlers in nappies as long as possible, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

This is my own personal experience with early potty “training”, both with starting at 10mths with my daughter Freya, and then from almost the word go with my son Ferdy.

When my daughter was about 10mths old I was told about a friends trip to the hospital for a check up on her daughter who had been born prematurely. The consultant she saw had asked if G was using a potty yet, at which my friend was stunned into asking why she was being asked this. The consultant was from a country on the continent and there it is considered normal to put a baby on a potty at every change as soon as it can sit unaided, as a result of the exorbitant cost of disposable nappies, which put parents off using them any longer than is necessary. Often as not by the time they are able to walk they are also able to come out of nappies without the sort of headaches and worries that we often see posted on toddler forums.

Armed with this information, I went out that weekend and bought Freya a potty and started at every change to sit her on it, maybe read her a story if I had time, or just chat to her while she sat and I got her next nappy ready. If she performed she was praised, and very quickly got the hang of doing her wees on the potty because she knew it made us happy. By the time Freya was 18mths old we often had her telling us she needed a wee/poo and she would have dry nappies when we took her to the toilet (having now got her a loo seat reducer so she could be a “big girl” like mummy). At this point she was only just starting to walk unaided and it coincided with me being pregnant with Ferdy, and also suffering from severe, undiagnosed SPD, as well as being in the throes of moving house once again. As a result, although she could most likely have come out of nappies pretty nearly as soon as she started walking (wouldn’t have felt practical to do so before this) we put it off until after Ferdy had arrived, and she eventually abandoned daytime nappies when she was little over 2yrs old

At the time when Ferdy arrived we were staying at my parents house, in the middle of a relocation move, and nosing through mums bookshelves one day I found a pregnancy/baby book from when Mum would have been pregnant with either myself, or my brother, early to mid 70’s. In this, amongst some wonderfully outdated information about maintaining your normal standards of care towards your partner (ie slippers ready, meal ready etc etc) in order that he wouldn’t feel left out, or get jealous (!) there was something I hadn’t expected.

The recommendation was that once you brought baby home, at every change you should sit him on the “pot” and give him a chance to perform – it even went on to explain that if you warmed the pot in cold weather, or made the pot cold in warm weather this would create a difference in the temperatures, which would stimulate baby to perform! Ok, so I thought this was a bit daft, but coupled with a very determined daughter who felt certain that her little, few week old brother needed a wee every time he was changed, we did start to sit him on the loo (with reducer that Freya was still using) and just held him there for a few minutes. It was remarkable just how often he would do a wee in the loo, so we just kept doing it.

When he was a few months old this progressed to his doing “big jobs” on the loo as well as wees, for which he was very highly praised. And for me it was wonderful as it made nappies so much easier to wash/deal with! At around 7mths he started to wake us up painfully early each morning screaming his head off. If we got to him in time, whipped his nappy off and sat him on the loo he would do his morning “big job” on there – if we missed him, we were rewarded by even more screaming as he had learnt that he didn’t like it in his nappy. Whilst this was never the nicest part of our “potty training” it has helped us no end in the long run. At 14mths old Ferdy started to go without nappies by day – at first this meant allowing him to go round with no pants, or trousers on as he would associate the feel of anything around his bottom as a nappy and promptly wee in it. After a few weeks we were getting him to wear trousers (no pants) with more success, and once he learnt to pull his trousers up and down himself the accidents lessened even more. Now as I write this he is just over 2yrs old, and will tell us every time he needs a wee, sometimes he might leak a tiny bit before he finds the potty, or reaches the loo, but not often. We have been travelling with him nappy-free since the day I told him he wasn’t going to wear another daytime nappy and again, a few accidents have happened, but on the whole they have been far less than I might have expected.

All the advice I have read about potty training in the 21st century suggests that you need to wait til your child lets you know they are “ready”, and having seen some friends have some extreme difficulties with 3-4 yr olds who either refuse to poo on the loo/potty or even get really upset about being asked to change from weeing in their nappies, to being a big girl/boy and doing as mummy/daddy does as the whole concept is very alien to them, I feel certain that if you are able, and want to give early “potty training” a go, it will do them no harm whatsoever, and may even help make the whole experience a far less stressful one for all concerned.

As I write this I am expecting my 3rd baby and I fully intend to start him/her in the same way as I did with Ferdy. I hope this helps other parents to have the confidence to abandon the conventions they might be faced with on the subject of potty training now, and try what we found to be a very chilled out, easy way of starting a young baby using the potty/toilet with no issues of introducing a new way of doing things as it has been done from early on.



Reddit!Del.icio.us!Facebook!Slashdot!Netscape!Technorati!StumbleUpon!Newsvine!Furl!Yahoo!Ma.gnolia!Free social bookmarking plugins and extensions for Joomla! websites! title=
 
< Prev   Next >

[+]
  • Narrow screen resolution
  • Wide screen resolution
  • Increase font size
  • Decrease font size
  • Default font size
  • fresh color
  • warm color