Step 1: Take off the diaper, and leave it off. I suspect that this may be the most common problem parents and caregivers face in initiating and progressing to successful potty training--They're afraid to take off the diaper.
Wouldn't it be easier if the child remained in the diaper and learned to verbally announce the need to use the toilet? Unfortunately, in order for this approach to work, the child must be old enough to verbally announce the need. That means three or more years old. Who wants to wait that long? Not you or the child.
I've witnessed the "potty training,"--but let's call it "potty learning"-- of three children who were all potty trained by twenty-four months of age. It went like this.
Wouldn't it be easier if the child remained in the diaper and learned to verbally announce the need to use the toilet? Unfortunately, in order for this approach to work, the child must be old enough to verbally announce the need. That means three or more years old. Who wants to wait that long? Not you or the child.
I've witnessed the "potty training,"--but let's call it "potty learning"-- of three children who were all potty trained by twenty-four months of age. It went like this.
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I took off her diaper, and left it off, when she was eight months old. You heard that correctly--eight months old. I never diapered her again. She had begun to strongly resist diapering and I had read about infant potty training with a cue sound and a potty bowl, so I gave it a try.
I began to give her a cue sound, "ssss," or a grunt, depending, and to hold her over a potty bowl, potty, the toilet, the sink, the grass in the backyard, . . . Anyway, whenever I thought she might need to go--and I began to notice a pattern--I would make the sound and offer the "potty opportunity."
I put her in training pants when we went out and she slept on a sheepskin and flat cloth diaper at night, but she wore no diapers.
Over the following months, I cleaned the carpet a lot. By eighteen months, she used the potty on her own. By twenty-four months, she was "perfectly potty trained."
I began to give her a cue sound, "ssss," or a grunt, depending, and to hold her over a potty bowl, potty, the toilet, the sink, the grass in the backyard, . . . Anyway, whenever I thought she might need to go--and I began to notice a pattern--I would make the sound and offer the "potty opportunity."
I put her in training pants when we went out and she slept on a sheepskin and flat cloth diaper at night, but she wore no diapers.
Over the following months, I cleaned the carpet a lot. By eighteen months, she used the potty on her own. By twenty-four months, she was "perfectly potty trained."
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I would still do the diaper free time and just accept the misses.
We added a little extra motivation with a "potty only" toy. It's bribery, of course. I'd heard of using food, but our son loves anything with a noisy button.
If you've got a squirmy kid, a personality-fitting bribe helps :)
I just wish I had realized how badly I was undermining our efforts when I put the occasional diaper on my girls. My youngest daughter, for example, would still occasionally poop her pants out in public (but never at home) months after we had stopped using diapers entirely, and I think it was based on habits she picked up because she was diapered only when we were out of the house for an extended period.
Love, love, love that picture of the baby on the beach.
One of my daughters learned on her own at a very young age. Got chicken pox (this was before the vaccine was widely available) really bad in the diaper area and she was just too sore (Ever had it? Those pox lesions hurt bad!) for diapers or for being at all messy. I don't remember the exact age, but it was young enough that we weren't thinking in terms of toilet, just trying to spare the poor kid some pain. She never needed diapers again.
i've been on diaperfreebaby.org before. when you think about it, all the people in the people in the '3rd world' don't use diapers because a] they cant afford them [and neither can i anymore] and b] it wasn't really part of their culture.
diapers are kind of like smoking... diapers ruin the environment, and smoking ruins yourself. we could quit both habits right now but we still go buy them and give in to the easy way through life.