It’s my potty, I’ll pee if I want to!

I’ve been thinking about the whole potty thing again. When my big girl was somewhere between two and a half and three years old, we started teaching her. I don’t remember exactly when we did it, but I do know I was pregnant, so it was in that range. Of course she had some accidents but overall it went pretty well. It took another year before she was okay to go without a pull-up at night, but daytime wasn’t bad at all.

My little one only turned two in November, so she’s still substantially younger, but I’m thinking about starting soon, in a very low-key and relaxed way. I know there are all these “guaranteed” methods for one-day-success, but I don’t follow those. What worked for us last time was to have a potty seat that fits over the toilet, and to visit it often, but we also had a little standalone potty like the one on the left there. It became a part of our home decor, practically. It was in whatever room we were in. I only put my daughter in pants if we were leaving the house, otherwise she as in a pair of underwear. I would ask her to try to pee frequently and we just about had a party whenever she did go. Not everyone agrees with the method, but we used stickers whenever she peed in the potty or toilet. It wasn’t so much a reward system as it was a way for her to see her own progress. She could look on the paper we had stuck to the washing machine (which is in our bathroom) and see that she had peed X amount of times in an appropriate place and she was so proud. She also asked for a second sticker to put right on the potty itself and that made her proud too, to look at the potty and see it covered in stickers.

I don’t expect miracles with my little one, but at the same time, she seems curious. She sees her big sister on the toilet so of course she’s expressed an interest in doing it herself. She hasn’t had any success yet but she has sat up there rather happily, and she likes to use the toilet paper, even if she didn’t do anything. I think I would be crazy to wait longer just because of age if she’s this eager right now. And obviously, if she started to show signs of being upset or uninterested, we’d stop.

But hoo boy, the whole process. Too bad humans aren’t like cats who learn within days where to do their business!