Potty Training Before 2

I'M POTTY TRAINED!  Felix has been without daytime diapers for almost two weeks now, and I think I've pretty much got the hang of it.

I say that I'm potty trained because Felix isn't necessarily leading this charge.  Since it's outside my general child-rearing philosophy to take the lead, largely preferring instead to let him show me the way, I should probably explain.

Shortly after Felix's first birthday I noticed that he could control his bladder to some degree.  One day we were waiting for the bath to get warm and he squatted down and peed on the bathroom floor.  I got a rag and wiped it up, then he peed again, and I wiped it up again.  Then he peed a third time, just a few dribbles, with a little grunt that told me he was obviously doing it on purpose, just so that he could play with it.

Even being somewhat familiar with elimination communication and babies' ability to control their sphincters long before we tend to think they are capable, it surprised me.  I didn't do anything at the time with that knowledge, because the whole world of EC seemed pretty daunting, and I admit to having little faith that it would work.  It also seemed like a huge pain in the ass.  Sit my baby on a potty every twenty minutes while making a psss sound and hope that he connects the dots over a matter of months, in the meantime cleaning lots of pee off the floor?  Yeah...plus we had carpet.  No thanks.



Then a few months later Felix got a horrible yeasty diaper rash that necessitated him being naked as much as possible.  Since I was already wiping up tons of pee (though thankfully by then we were in our new house with hard floors), I figured I might as well get a little potty and try it out.

Guys, it was like magic.  Baby pee pee voodoo.  Every time I held him over the potty (which was a trick in itself since Felix vehemently refuses any effort to keep him still, for any reason, at any time) and made the cue sound (pssss), he would just go.  I would just watch him and if I got the sense he needed to pee, I'd take him into the bathroom and offer.  Sometimes he would refuse even when he did need to go, and there were lots of misses, but also lots of catches.  Enough to encourage me to keep with it.

We were pretty laissez faire about the whole thing.  I'd let him be naked at home, not worry about misses, no pressure whatsoever on him to do it "my way."  When we went out of the house and when he slept we used diapers.  If I was tired of cleaning up pee or wasn't able to watch him closely enough to pick up on his cues or keep track of the last time he peed or if he chugged a ton of water, I just put him in a diaper.

I would've been content to do that forever (or at least until the day he walked up to me and said, "Mother, these diapers are for children.  Do let me use the lavatory.") but I stumbled on a thread in our local API discussion forum that discussed part-time diaper use and why it can be a good idea to potty train before age 2.

There is a window, around 15-18 months, when toddlers are old enough to understand what they are being asked to do and also have the physical ability to do it.  It can be taught as a simple physical skill; just as they are learning that dirty rags go in the hamper, they can learn that pee and poo go in the potty.

What happens after that window?  Why not wait until 2 or 3?  Because that wonderful hallmark of toddlerhood - couterwill - sets in with full force.  Counterwill is a toddler's predisposition to resist any kind of coercion.  The harder you nudge them towards something, the harder they resist it.  Most potty training techniques are aimed at circumventing counterwill and have little to do with teaching them the concept or developing the physical ability.  Stickers, bribes, candy, praise, cheering, songs, or the wait-until-it's-his-idea approach are all manipulative ways of tiptoeing around their contrary nature.

Older toddlers are also more sensitive to change and potty training can be very emotional.  Toddlerhood is all about the push-pull of dependence and independence, and pushing the responsibility of elimination on a 3 year old can be difficult for them to take on.  Even without counterwill being present, they may resent or fear the independence that accompanies potty training.  Or they may love it.  Or they may oscillate between the two.

But if you can catch them before there are emotions involved, the process can be simplified.  Not made easier, necessarily, but made more simple.  Having no experience with potty training an older toddler, I would hazard a guess that doing it early requires more time, patience, attention and focus, but avoids some emotional stress and conflict.

Why not just wait until it's his idea?  Because diapers are gross, man.  Not for me; I don't mind changing them and I don't mind washing them.  I mean the concept of sitting in pee, or sitting in chemical gel that holds pee, is gross.  I think the frequency of diaper rashes is a pretty good testament to the fact that butts don't like diapers.

And of course, it all depends on the child.  Lots and lots of 2 and 3 year olds potty train with no conflict at all and make the transition gracefully.  The story goes that I self-trained at 18 months with no encouragement.  I also have heard stories of four and five year olds who flat refuse to have anything to do with a toilet.  Knowing my child as I do, I feel secure in saying that he will give us a run for our money in the counterwill department, and I really do feel like we are avoiding some major conflict by just getting this out of the way now.  "No" is already his favorite word, and he will default to it before even processing your question, only nodding when you ask a second time and he realizes you said, "outside" or "chi chi" or "chickens" (his most favorite things).

Also, the problem with the part-time diapering we were doing is that it was sending a mixed and complicated message.  When you're inside and naked, you pee in the potty.  When you're outside, you go on the ground.  When anything is covering your butt, you just go.  I could have made the whole thing simpler from the start by giving one simple message; that the potty is where you pee all the time.

So those two things - realizing that I was sending a mixed message and realizing that the window for purely physical potty training was closing - prompted me to go ahead and be done with (daytime) diapers for good.

I stayed home for a few days and focused solely on catching as many pees as possible.  I was already familiar with his cues, but I paid attention more closely and aimed for catching every pee and acknowledging every miss.  That required staying by his side constantly, watching for his cues with a potty at arm's reach.  I jotted down every time he peed so I could get an idea of his patterns.  He pees roughly every hour, more often in the morning and after nap.  If we missed a pee, I would immediately say something like, "Oh look, you put pee on the floor.  Pee goes in the potty.  Where's the potty?"  to help him make the connection.

I let him nap naked on top of a waterproof pad and a towel.  On the first day he peed several times, the second day once, and from the third day on he's been dry, even through long three hour naps.

We do use a diaper at night.  He nurses several times at night and I am absolutely not up for nighttime potty use.  My sleep is currently too precious.

Over the last two weeks I have gotten much better at reading him and anticipating his need to pee.  We have three potties so that one is always near, and as soon as I see that he needs to go, I either slide it under him or point to it and he'll sit on it himself.  I avoid asking him if he needs to go, because the answer will be "no" whether he needs to or not.

The first time we left the house it was a quick run to the grocery store.  We bolted out the door right after he peed, to give us a good window.  I raced through the store with him in the sling, the entire time waiting to feel warm wetness spread on my shirt.  We checked out and ran straight to the bathroom, even though only thirty minutes had passed since he had peed last.  I stood him on the rim of the toilet and he peed the tiniest little trickle.  Ha!

Now I don't fear going out.  I keep spare clothes in my purse and put him in trainers (the lightly padded kind, not the waterproof ones).  It's kind of funny to think how much anxiety I had about a possible accident.  He wouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed, and neither should I.  So far we've only had one miss, and it wasn't even enough to soak through to his shorts.  He actually does better when we're out than at home, as long as we give him enough opportunities to pee and preempt his actually needing to go badly.

That's the other reason I say I am potty trained rather than Felix.  He doesn't usually signal to me that he needs to pee, and is just now starting to go to the potty on his own at home.  If I miss his cues he doesn't tug at me or sign or say anything; he just goes.  He certainly gets it, and I'm sure he would seek out the potty on his own more consistently if I rewarded or praised him lavishly when he did, but I'm not going to do that.  Not my style. 

It's definitely a time and energy commitment and certainly not for every child or parent.  If I weren't a stay-at-home mom or if this hadn't worked out as well as it did, you bet I'd be one of the "wait until it's his idea" folks having no issues changing diapers at age three or four.   I'm mostly putting this out there because I didn't really know that there was a middle ground between that wait-it-out philosophy and the EC from birth camp.