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It’s done. It is finished. After almost 10 years of diapers, my boys are potty trained. Still working on nights, but that can take a while.
I am so happy to be here. Not only do we get to save about $50 a month but I no longer have to change diapers. YAY! What a wonderful feeling that is!
I am also done with potty training. This is huge because I HATE POTTY TRAINING! I hate it. My boys take forever. It sometimes felt like they would head off to college in diapers. Seriously. If you are someone whose kids got it right away, this post is not for you. This post is for my friends who struggle with potty training too.
I probably should have gotten a frog potty for my boys…
I am not an expert on this at all. What worked for my kids might not work for yours, but since we are finally at the finish line, I thought I would share a little bit about what we did to get there. And what we shouldn’t have done. And all of that.
My oldest took FOREVER and a day to get there. Two years of really trying with him. Of taking him to the potty and hoping that he would one day GET that you should use the potty. Two years!!! Finally, I had enough. With the encouragement of his preschool teacher, I switched him to underwear and didn’t look back. This was hard. The mess. The frustration. But I kept at it. It took exactly three weeks. I remember sitting at the kitchen table hearing him run down the hall towards the bathroom yelling, “I’ve got to go potty!!!” He finally got it. I was so happy! So very happy!
With my second little boy, we tried earlier but he didn’t seem to get it either. I was super pregnant so didn’t worry about it all that much. We could do two in diapers again, not a big deal. Really, it wasn’t. A lot of people worry about the two in diaper thing but it isn’t as scary as it sounds, I promise. Anyway, it was a mix of Grandma and Daddy taking him all the time and of him seeing the baby wearing diapers, but he got it right before his fourth birthday. Yay! Only one more to go.
Now, I was optimistic. This third child was going to do it early. He was going to be the one to ask to be out of diapers, to wake up one day and get it. NOPE. We semi tried last spring and he didn’t get it. Fine. He is only three. We will wait. So summer started and I was done. At his preschool, you just have to be potty trained by the time you are four which is the next month. So I knew we had time but I really didn’t want to have him start the new school year in his new class.
So we worked hard. We put him in underwear and dealt with it. Finally, like a week before school started, he finally got it. It took all summer. Tons of accidents and he finally did it. YAY! Finally! (And in the last few months he has had accidents here and there but I think that could be normal?)
Anyway, looking back over the years I learned a few things:
1) Going straight to underwear is the key, although it might take longer than a few days.
2) Sometimes Mom and Dad are not prepared or are not able to handle how long it will take after you switch to underwear.
3) Sometimes you have to take a break from it. This was the case with my oldest. It was hard to stick with it and I had to take a lot of breaks. Ben was gone and I just couldn’t emotionally deal with it at the time. I know, “they, ” say not to do this but it was my reality at the time.
4) It is okay if your kid is not potty trained by their third birthday. It really is. Especially if it is a boy. I have heard boy moms freak out because their two-year-old is not trained yet. It’s really ok.
5) In some case, it might take until they are 4+. Some boys take this long. That is okay too as long as there isn’t something medical going on.
6) You need encouragement from friends. It seems like this is what I needed to get through this stage. Friends that said, “You can do it, I know it is hard, but you can.”
7) Your kids will learn how to use the potty. It might not seem like it. But it will happen one day. And you will celebrate.
Potty training took forever with BOTH my kids. They were stubborn.
OMG… Marshall will be 5 in October and we are STILL struggling with it. He’ll have a few days where he has no accidents and then all of a sudden he will regress and have multiple accidents in a day. His pre-school will not let him come in underwear until he is accident free because they don’t want the kids to have accidents on their carpet. So he wears pull-ups in school, which is just an invitation potty in your pants as far as he’s concerned. He has to be potty trained before the new school year starts in September so I’m really hoping that it clicks for him over the summer!
Mine has been both easy and hard. He has been urine trained since right at his 3rd birthday. He did that pretty easily. But now 8 months later he STILL refuses to poop in the potty. It’s not that he can’t control it. He wears underwear all day every day and just asks for a diaper when he needs to poop. So he’s actually very much in control. I’ve tried refusing to put the diaper on but then he refuses to poop. I have seen kids get true medical issues from holding it. So that scares me. At least he goes ok with the diaper. I’m hoping one day he’ll just get over it, but the longer it goes on the more I wonder!!
I feel like your post is what I will be saying several years from now. My name is Julie, my husband’s name is Ben, we have 3 boys and potty training is a nightmare! I have three in diapers… THREE! It’s not as bad as people make it out to be but my bank account doesn’t like it, and neither do my poor dry cracked hands lol preschool is right around the corner for the eldest. He CAN pee AND poop on the toilet, just doesn’t care to. I think we will need to invest in the potty urinal and several more pairs of diapers. Summer is fast approaching and I think we will be having a naked summer for the 3 yr old and 2 yr old! Fingers crossed!
By diapers I meant underwear!