An excerpt written by my nephew’s wife on her family blog caught my attention – in particular her description of her two-year-old’s successful absorption of the technique for potty training in less than a day. Her description followed the method I used decades ago with my own children. Perhaps it offers a few ideas for parents of young children who have resolved this year to move their toddler to the next level of maturity.
Tara wrote that she convinced her husband, Jeremy, to give up a valuable Saturday to potty train Sammy.
“It will give Sammy a project to work on!” I said enthusiastically, safe in the knowledge that we had agreed that Dad would potty train boys and Mom would train the girls. Jeremy reluctantly agreed.
We have a potty training system that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It starts out like a modified “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day.”
Trainee goes with parent to grocery store and stocks up with super-unhealthy snacks that we usually don’t buy: miniature snack packs, a variety of juices and non-healthy drinks like Kool-Aid.
This is the equivalent of letting them loose in the snack aisle to finally grab all the things they always ask for and never expect to get.
Said trainee comes home in shock and settles in the kitchen with a stash of too-large underwear, a baby doll, a miniature potty and a whole slew of kids who line up in rows to watch like it’s a movie. Everyone has an eye on the snack and drink tray, elaborate and varied as it is.
Then the Trainer, already feeling a little harried by the commotion and the thought of what’s to come, begins demonstrating what to do. The Trainer asks the Trainee to teach all this to the baby doll.
Treats abound, psychological warfare begins, the Trainee starts to feel and act a little drunk from all the liquids. Time passes, excitement builds as all wait to see if connections have been made. The excitement reaches a fever pitch just about the time that the Trainee leaves a large puddle on the floor.
Undefeated, the Trainer keeps at it with reminders, suggestions and an anxious day reading books on the kitchen floor with an eye on the clock.
The next day, Mommy throws all that out the window and starts putting the Trainee on the potty at regular intervals until things click.
The good part about the initial, shall we say, Party Training is that it cements very firmly into the Trainee’s mind that Training is a very good thing.
This time around the first day went as I laid out above.
But the second day changed – either because of superior techniques used in Training, many hints from his older sister to do something or extra motivation on Sammy’s part. For whatever the reason, Sammy went to the potty in time, every time. The mistakes have been few and are usually due to extremely distracting situations.
We did have a couple sessions of “You did what? We are so proud, we are going to call …. ” another trick from the book: Call a favorite character of the child.
This always makes me giggle because it reminds me of a day when another Trainee called “Elmo” at work. “Elmo” slipped into a conference room to take the call but it takes quite a bit of volume to attain Elmo levels. The room was not soundproof. When he came back out, someone asked him if he was OK.
Tara concluded, “I’m astonished that TTLD did its job and that Samuel is now nap-time dry and a lot happier acting.”
Ahh, those were the days. I remember them well. It is a good technique. I highly recommend it, but I am not volunteering at all to re-live them and help anyone use this method with their child. Good luck to the moms and dad who must make and achieve this resolution in the upcoming year.