Getting Hannah to be potty trained has been a nagging issue at the back of my mind. I know of babies who were potty trained before they turned one while others only mastered it around three to four years old. Internet baby websites say that readiness for potty training usually occur around two to three years old. I think that makes sense as it is the age when a toddler would be able to communicate better and understand adult’s language, walk steadily to the potty and manage to pull up and down their bottoms.
We planned to formally start Hannah on potty training over this year-end school holidays. Although we had presented the idea of using the potty to Hannah for many months now, she was still wearing diapers / pull-up pants and much preferred not to ‘do it’ in the potty. The advantage of using the holidays is that I don’t have to work and can therefore stay at home to monitor her potty training closely.
I gathered a few ideas here and there to encourage Hannah to use the potty:
1) Remove her dependence on pull-up pants
For a start, I stopped using pull-up pants on Hannah and replace it with an underwear. The exceptions are when she naps in the afternoon, goes out with us and sleeps at night. One thing at a time. Let her overcome her reliance on pull-up pants in her conscious state first.
2) Buy underwear that has cartoon characters
To entice her to put on underwear. I bought a pack of panties with Dora pictures printed in front from Kiddy Palace recently. I told her that she shouldn’t wet Dora. Hee hee :)
3) Buy stickers as incentives
Hannah was told that she could get a sticker from my ‘collection’ if she ‘wee wee’ or ‘poo poo’ in her potty. As she has no problem sitting on the potty, there’s no reward for doing just that. She has to pass urine or motion to earn her sticker. It works well for Hannah so far as she enjoys getting new stickers and pasting on and peeling them off her shirt, floor, book, everywhere you name it. We got our stash of stickers from Popular Bookstore. For $1.90, you get a collection of 60 different and colourful stickers :)
Today is her first day without pull-up pants. Already got one accidental wetting of herself but she learned her lesson (as mommy pretended to make a little fuss and repeated the correct procedure to her). That’s why it is important to be able to stay at home for the training. We also try to remember to get Hannah to sit on the potty every 30 minutes or appropriate (depending on the timing of her meals and drinks) as she didn’t seem to know how to tell the urge until it is too late. Our attitude towards the whole new training is ‘take-your-time’, be encouraging and ‘don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff’.
For the record, Hannah earned one sticker at the end of her first day of training and she treated it like a real treasure! :)
Updates on 2nd Jan 2012:
1) ‘Accidents’ – As far as urinating goes, Hannah has stopped urinating in her panty after three to four wetting incidents all within the first week. The frequency of me asking her to go to her potty is every 1-2 hours now. However, passing motion in the potty is still quite iffy due to her irregular rhythm and failure to read her own urge. She just soiled her panty today again.
2) The sticker reward method worked so well as Hannah has gotten so many stickers stuck to her easel. Of late, the novelty has started to wear off as she didn’t ask for the stickers regularly. It is about time :)
3) Hannah could go without diapers on our outings too. She was the one who wanted to wear her panty instead of diaper when I asked her for her preference :) And she enjoyed visiting kiddy toilets at shopping malls.
4) Finally, she seldom wet her diaper during naps and night-time sleep. Hence, I could re-use the dry diaper again! :D
Updates on 26th Jan 2012:
1) Hannah has upgraded from using the potty to child training toilet seat at home in early Jan to get used to the idea of doing her ‘businesses’ on the toilet bowl as it would be case in her kindergarten and public places.
2) Hannah has not had accidental wetting or soiling of her panties since the last update. We managed to nail down her ‘poo poo’ rhythm by conditioning her to do her daily big business during her last toilet visit before bedtime. She would pass urine on the toilet bowl and then sit for around 5 mins for her poo poo to start coming out. I discovered a reliable indicator if she’s got poo poo on the way – she will get goose bumps all over her arms and legs! In fact, she also recognises this signal herself – hee hee. There were also days when she would tell me that no poo poo was coming after she sat on the toilet bowl for a while. Well, I just told her that we could try again the following night.
3) Hannah is still on diapers during naptime and nighttime sleep. She still wet the diaper occasionally and hence I’m not too keen for her to sleep without the diaper.
Updates on 1st Aug 2012
Time flies indeed. It has been 7 months since my last update on Hannah’s toilet training.
After our first overseas trip to Telunas Beach Resort in June, Hannah has been sleeping through the night without her diapers. I took the plunge to go diaper-free after noticing that she had dry diapers throughout the Telunas stay. There was another factor which made me want to stop using diapers on her – she has been getting diaper rashes and the desitin cream didn’t appear to be effective anymore.
Hannah fared pretty well so far with occasional wetting of her bed. We found that communicating with her on her wetting accidents helped to make her conscious of the fact that soiling her bed was not desirable. We also told our girl that she should call out to us, even if it is in the middle of the night, to bring her to ease herself if she finds that she wants to urinate. But in all her ‘accidents’ so far, she never did. Oh well.
As for her nap times, she has been off diapers since around March as we noticed that she didn’t need them at all.
As of now, Hannah is fully capable of communicating her need to use the toilet and whether it is to urinate or pass motion. So all in all, she took about 8 months to reach this stage.
Hai!
Love to read your blog. TQ for sharing the idea. I will use the sticker as the reward .TQ so much!
Regards
Ereen
Hi Ereen,
You’re very welcomed and thanks for dropping by and leaving us a note. :) Hope that the sticker reward will work for your child as well :)
Happy New Year!
Oh my gosh! that is so good that she has stopped urinating so much in her dora panties :)
My nephew is now doing potty training too but not been that successful, he likes gaining stickers so he gets an incentive after certain amount of stickers (i.e. animal figures), but just pees all over :S He just stares at the wee coming out of the pants onto the floor. Got any tips? :-)
Hi didi,
Erm, I’m no potty training guru, hee hee :) I was just sharing my own experience with our girl on our blog.
May I know the age of your nephew? Does his parents / care-giver have a consistent timing for him to use the potty, e.g. every 1 hr? For Hannah, the fixed and regular potty visits helped to instil the idea that pee-ing should be done in the potty and not anywhere else. I also kept reminding her that she shouldn’t wet her panty and the floor. Hope that your nephew will get into the momentum of doing it right soon :)
Hi Ling! I’ve started potty training for my little boy for several weeks now. He’s turning 2 in March. Initially, he was afraid of the potty and would cry everytime we tried to put him on it. Then I stuck his favoruite Thomas train stickers on the potty. I also borrowed a cute book from the library on the topic. He’s now ok to sit on the pottty, but still reluctant to urine or poo there. For 2 hours everyday, he goes without his diaper. The first few times he ran to the potty but got there too late. After that, he seems as if he’s holding the urine back. Just wondering is he still too young for potty training?
Hi Trophee,
Thanks for sharing your experience on potty training with me and those who read this blog :)
Honestly, I also don’t know whether your boy is ready for potty training! Hee hee. Have you considered giving your boy stickers as reward for successful pee-ing or poo-ing on the potty? He might just need a bit more motivation. I was also wondering whether you’re game to totally replace his diaper with underwear instead (except when he’s sleeping). He might learn faster that way. Having said that, it is important to play by ear as we don’t want to stress up the child too much if he is not ready. Do take your time and take it easy, all children will reach there eventually. :)
Hi Ling
My gal is 21 months old. I am just wondering whether are there any signs that show that a toddler is ready for potty training? We tried putting her on the potty but she refused. We put a toilet cover with Hello Kitties over the adult toilet and she would sit for less than 1 minute before insisting to come down. Of course, nothing comes out.
Hence, I am wondering whether is there certain signs to look out for. Should we want to start potty training, how do you manage times when your girl needs to go out? (Like school or church or outdoor excusions)
Regards
Hi Theresa,
Wow, how time flies. Your girl is 21 months old already :D Praise the Lord!
After reading your comment, I have a couple of pointers which might help. As I don’t have a complete picture of your potty training your girl, please pardon me if I make any assumptions.
1) As mentioned in my blog post, as long as your girl could communicate with adults she is ready for potty training. Even if she can’t tell you when her urge has or would come, it is okay as long as she understands you. She will eventually recognise the urges for passing urine and motion and tell you one day.
2) The best way to achieve success is often through failure. It is true, failure is the mother of success!
I let Hannah experience what it was like to wet her panty – that it is unpleasant and messy. These so-called accidents were the means to push her to try to stay dry. Of course, the care-givers must be prepared for the inconvenience of cleaning up. Having said that, the efforts do pay off. Now, it is important for her care-giver to be committed to stay home with your girl for at least 2-3 days to do the training with your girl going totally diaper-free (except for sleep times) and totally wearing just the panty. That way, the impact is greater. Try to minimise outings during the training period. If going out is unavoidable, put diaper on your girl.
Start training in the home setting first. If it is successful, then proceed to going public places. After a week or so of home training plus going out in her diaper, I asked Hannah whether she would like to wear diaper or panty for our next outing and she opted for the panty without any hesitation. I tried to impress upon her during our training that only babies wear diaper, small girls wear panty. The standard procedure practised by most parents when bringing their young tots out: visit the toilet at home first just before heading out, and bring tot to public toilet every 45mins to an hour depending on the amt of fluid she has consumed. Be prepared to clean up in the public if your girl wet herself. Again, accidents are opportunities for success! Always bring extra set of clothes. You will need them.
If you or your husband drive, having a potty in the car could come in handy if your girl suddenly wants to relieve herself and there is no loo nearby.
Once your girl could manage at home and in public, then try going diaper-free during her nap times if you notice that her diapers are mostly dry after napping. The last hurdle would be going diaper-free during night time slumber.
It all looked very daunting to me at the beginning but things somehow all fall into place nicely when we took all the little failures in our stride and tried to stay positive throughout.
BTW too, did you try the reward method? It worked for Hannah.
Hi Ling
Thanks for the sharing. Wow – that’s a lot of work!!! I am thinking of trying out toilet training this Sun/Mon (over the long weekend).
Thanks for the sharing!!!
Hi Theresa,
You’re welcomed :)
And I’d like to clarify on my comment on letting my girl experience wetting in case I was unclear. I DIDN’T deliberately allow Hannah to wet herself during her training period. I bring her to ease herself at the potty at about every 1 hour interval. However, as she haven’t mastered the ability to control her bladder, accidental wettings did happen. Those were the times when the failures reinforce the need to try to control her bladder and also to express her need to us.