Potty Train Your Child in One Weekend

We potty trained our three year old in one weekend. How? A commitment to limiting our purchases of Pull-ups. As the cost of living has risen, our desire to cut corners and save every penny we could has increased. We were spending upwards of 56 dollars a month on Pull-ups, the buck had to stop there.

We discussed training with our pediatrician and she told us to look for the signs of being ready: asking to be changed, showing interest in the toilet, and asking how to use it. She told us to encourage and reinforce good bathroom habits: teach her how to wipe front to back only, ensure to wash hands after every trip, and use a lot of positive reinforcement. Don’t make it a negative experience by using words like “dirty, ” “naughty,” or “stinky” when you refer to what’s in the potty. She suggested a potty chair but we did not buy in to that.

I decided to bypass potty chairs and toilet rings. As I told my husband, “they are only a short lived fancy.” Once they get the hang of the big potty it’s easy. I remembered my oldest using the potty chair for one week before she decided that was a baby thing. I flushed $20 down the toilet then, I wasn’t about to do it again.

We had familiarized our little one with the toilet–what it was, how it worked, and alleviated any fears that she had. At about 18 months she began expressing curiosity about our potty habits. We thought great! We may be able to get her going on the potty sooner than we think. Wrong.

Her curiosity crumbled, limiting her use of the potty to only number 2. Soon, our hopes dwindled as she began having weekly bowel accidents. We decided she just was not ready.

Time passed and we were still at this stage. However the number 2 accidents gradually lessened. Before we knew it she told us every time, “I gotta go poo!” This was just before she turned three. Time to deal with number 1.

I began by encouraging her to use the potty every morning and ritually throughout the day. Sometimes she’d go, sometime not. Pretty soon, even though she was still wearing the Pull-ups, she was using the toilet more than the Pull-up.

As she progressed, I thought she might be using the Pull-up as a crutch. One weekend we went shopping and bought her some little girl panties that she picked out. She put them on and the wetting accidents began. We slide back to phase one, or is that two?

Now she was three. I felt like a failure and my hopes crashed every time I mopped up an accident.

One weekend we decided to take action. Since we already asked her repeatedly if she needed to go, and regularly encouraged her to use the potty, we made the trips more frequent. Everybody took his or her turn escorting her to the potty every thirty minutes. She wore her panties during the day and only donned a Pull-up at night. We made sure to reinforce her positively; also mentioning the feeling you get before you have to go. In the evenings, we limited her liquid intake and made sitting on the potty before bedtime a ritual.

It worked! It’s been over two months now. She uses the potty like a pro. She knows when she needs to go and says so. So far she has only had one accident at night–which is to be expected. We put a Pull-up on at night just in case.

Okay, the final steps to potty training took only a weekend. The entire process spanned a few months. I still think we did pretty well.

It seems that making it a routine and considering it a natural way of life had the best effect. Being consistent and working that consistency over that weekend really brought it home.