Un-Potty Training and 5 Tips in Hindsight

I'm going to be honest.
Potty training scared me.  Parts of it still do.

Teaching a determined preschooler how and when to use the toilet when he showed zero interest was super daunting!

Interest in superhero underpants came and went. Testing out his kid potty and kid toilet seat became lackluster.

It wasn't that he didn't know how it was just that he didn't want to do it.

I poured over articles and other parenting posts about the VARIOUS ways to potty train.  And there are MANY!  Which angle would we take?  How much pressure would we assert?

I knew that the mounting cost of having two in diapers for over a year was disconcerting to my bank account.  I also knew that there was no outside pressure to potty train him by a certain age.  His preschool was OK with it, his family was OK with it, his friends certainly didn't mind (or even to notice!), and most of all he really didn't mind.  From what I gathered, if given the time, children will do it pretty easily when they are ready.

Don't get me wrong, visions of The Bear entering Kindergarten with a diaper on entered my thoughts.  I quickly dismissed these with him just one day deciding he was ready and never looking back.

This is, essentially, what has happened.

We are not out of the woods yet but we are officially in the midst of un-potty training.  Here are 5 tips I wish I knew a year ago:

1. Don't get him all worked up about potty training.  Talk about it.  Talk about how mommy and daddy do it and how his big cousins don't wear diapers.  The less foreign to him, the more interest it generates.
2. Do it in small, comfortable increments.  If he is not ready to poop on the potty, let him do it in a diaper for a while.  Put him in a diaper during naps and bedtime and then slowly wean him off those one at a time. No rush.
3. Celebrate small victories!  A trip to the grocery store with dry pants gets mom and dad crazy-dance time.  All weekend with underwear on during waking hours = excavator tractor! Give him some super fun incentives that don't have to be food related!
4. Have back-ups: diapers, underwear, shorts/pants!
5. If an accident happens, he might be embarrassed and want to revert back to diapers for a minute.  Let him.  Your confidence in him will build his own confidence.

As long as I let him go at his own speed I find that there are far fewer blow-ups and tears.  I also realize that taking your sweet-ass time is not always realistic but the stress level is almost non-existent and therefore, totally worth it for The Beehive.

Swiffing in underpants.

P.S.  We went on a day car trip and brought the potty seat.  He told us when he needed to go and we would pull off and he would sit in the back of the car on his potty and pee and we would dump it in a discreet place.  It was something I was worried about since we take many road trips.  He didn't have one accident!

I am not so scared of potty training anymore.