Potty Training Tips for Less Mess

Hello everyone and welcome back to my little blog where I share lifestyle and motherhood content. This is the last post in my short series dedicated to passing on the knowledge I wish I had during my first year of motherhood.

If you are interested in my other blogs in this series you can find them below:

• Baby Gear Essentials
• Newborn Essentials
• Things You Need in Your Carry On if You’re Traveling With Kids
• Tips for Exclusively Pumping
• What’s in my Diaper Bag?
• What’s in my Hospital Bag?
• 5 Things to Bring on a Roadtrip with Kids
• Sleep Training Tips to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night
• Your NICU Survival Kit

Today I will be sharing my potty training tips and tricks. I won’t lie, this has been the area of motherhood that I have been struggling with the most. For some reason I just can’t seem to nail down a consistent schedule and it honestly seems like neither of us are getting the hang of it some days.

Before I do though, I want to remind you that every kid is different and there is always a process when you are both learning a new skill. For parents you are learning how to teach your children and for kids, they are just plain learning. So here is your reminder to not get too worked up with kids, especially if you are a first timer like me.

So if you have gone through this or you’re preparing to potty train and you are struggling with the learning curve, I feel you because I am there with you. That said, I do have a couple of things that I have been doing to help teach potty awareness to my 2 year old and have helped me be a little less frustrated with all the accidents.

Start When You Don’t Have Anything Else Going on

This is my first tip because I feel like you should never introduce something new into your toddler’s routine when they already have additional stressors going on in their lives. This could be as simple as a sleep regression or as complicated as moving but no matter what, adding in a new task that takes a lot of brain cells to focus on is not a good idea when you or your kiddo are off your game.

Consistency is Key

I feel like this goes without say in parenthood in general, but the more consistent you are in offering potty breaks to your little one the faster they will catch on and get the hang of it. Just recently we had Grandparents visiting for about a week and it was so amazing, but potty training kind of fell out of priority and now me and my daughter are both having a little trouble getting back on the horse.

If There Are Tantrums, Slow Down

Potty training isn’t really about you, it’s about your little mini. You will learn how to have patience at a whole new level during this process because to be successful you’ll need to go at the pace of your child.

Each child is unique and I know a lot of blogs and books say the magic age to potty train is 1, but that isn’t necessarily true for all kids. If you notice your child is screaming “no” or just crying every single time you offer them the potty, they probably aren’t ready for it right now so it might be a good idea to hold off on potty training for a few days or even weeks.

As I said earlier, there may also be something going on with your toddler that you may need to address before you can start something as big as potty training.

Maybe they’re getting a new tooth, even starting to get scared of certain things. Kids around the age of 1-2 start to dream and can also have nightmares. When you’ve only been around for one year, you literally can’t talk about all this confusing new stuff that you’re going through so it is your job as a parent to know your child well enough to know when they are actually ready for potty training.

Experiment and Do What Works for You

I have read a lot of potty training books, blogs, and Instagram tips, tricks and how tos. There are a ton of different schools of thought for what you should do, but I am here to tell you to try them all. I started potty training by putting my daughter in underwear and letting her have accidents. The idea is that your child won’t like being wet and will communicate to you either through sign language or by saying “potty” that they need to go.

I learned after about a week that my mini doesn’t mind being wet and I hate doing that much laundry. If I put her into a dress without bottoms and she has an accident on the floor she gets upset and in the future tells me when she needs to go.

I also learned that she is pretty afraid of the big toilet in the bathroom and will cry every single time I put her on it, but she has no problem sitting on her little potty out in the middle of the living room. So at the end of the day I had an experiment to see what works for my child, and do that.

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Laundry and Dishes is a lifestyle blog which includes blog posts and articles written by myself as well as regular content from an amazing group of guest writers. We’d love to have you join us by subscribing to the email list for access to free printables, and by subscribing you won’t miss out on any new content.

And that is all I have for you today. Thank you so much for stopping by for this motherhood series and I will see you in my next one!

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