I think one of the scary tasks I had in the back of my mind when becoming a parent was…how do I teach someone how to hold their pee in, and then get them to pee/poop in the toilet? I mean other than the big scary task of raising a decent human being who is kind and considerate. But yeah potty training was one of those, “Oh SHIT,” literally, moments.

I am SO lucky to have a fairly self-sufficient independent kid. I always jokingly say that she’s raising herself, but she’s definitely taking the lead. We’ve always taken the “give her boundaries and she’ll figure it out on her own” approach like my parents did. So here we are. Jan 15th marks the day that she is potty trained, at 2 years and 7 months. I’m a proud mama.

But this, of course, couldn’t be done without the tips and tricks from the mamas before me. I’ve been getting a lot of questions on how we did it. So I figure I’d share here!

She started getting interested in the “big toilet” when she was about a little older than a year and a half. So we bought her a potty seat to go over the toilet to show her that if she wanted to, she could go on there too. She didn’t. But every few days or so she would bring it up. Then after about two years old, and watching me go in the big toilet, she wanted to give it a try. Cue the “good job” dances and high fives. This got her interested a little more, but not enough to do it regularly. But we did switch to pull-ups! Milestones.

So for the next 6 months, it’s very on and off. She would ask to go, we’d let her. We’d ask her if she wanted to, sometimes she said yes. It was very low pressure. BUT THEN… one week she had not one, but TWO abscesses in her diaper area (from the rubbing I guess?) and enough was enough. We decided that the next long weekend we were going all in.

 How’d we do it?

The weekdays leading up to the potty training weekend, as soon as she got home from daycare, we took off her pull up and put her in underwear. We picked out Minnie ones so that she’d be excited to wear them. Then we would keep her in them until bedtime. We constantly asked her if she had to pee in the “Big Toilet” and reminded her to not pee in her underwear. OR IT WILL DRIP DOWN HER LEG. No accidents all week.

Then Saturday – Monday…NO PULL UPS. To sweeten the deal, we gave her an M&M every time she used the toilet. Two if she #2. This worked REALLY well. I took her out to a birthday party Sunday, which was about an hour car ride each way. She did so great, even with running around having fun, she asked me to go pee a couple times, and no accidents on the long trip.

There was only one accident at home that weekend, her cousin was over and she was having so much fun she forgot to ask to use the bathroom. That was enough of an embarrassment that she hasn’t had an accident since. *knock on wood.

Despite how surprisingly quick this happened, we still had our hurdles to overcome. Pooping. She was still too scared to poop in the toilet, which made her hold it in. We had to keep an eye on her, whenever we saw her trying to push in a corner, we’d grab her and put her on the toilet. Not a very relaxing way to do your business I bet. But after about a week she got comfortable. We did have to up the ante and give her like 5 M&Ms for a #2.

Honestly, I don’t really have any secret trick. I really think it was just timing and luck that she’s a fairly easy kid.