What Did NOT Work for Potty Training – 4 Things I Tried That Were Complete Fails

When I brought my son home from the hospital I was terrified. 

Not of him, but of the many things I was now responsible for.

I was in charge of feeding him on time. I was in charge of keeping him clothed and learning how to read, and I was in charge of potty training him. How could that hospital let me leave with him when I didn’t know the first thing about any of these?

All those scary things turned out just fine with a bunch of mistakes made along the way, especially potty training! After teaching the first one the ropes I figured it would be easy with the second one.  Nope. Different kid, different problems. Today I’m excited to partner with my sponsor, CVS, to tell you four tactics that absolutely did NOT work for me in potty training and a few tactics that did. Two kids down, and I feel like some sorta expert, so listen up!

4 Tactics That Did NOT Work for Me During Potty Training

Here are a few things I tried that absolutely did not work for me like they did for others. Tell me if you see yourself in any of these scenarios!

1. Using food targets:  A lot of people told me to toss cereal or candy into the bowl then have the boys aim at them like it was a game. Neither one liked this one and instead learned the concept of tossing food into the toilet.
2. Spending the whole weekend near the bathroom: I distinctly remember getting advice to get my toddler naked from the waist down and to only allow access to areas around one bathroom. “Oh, he’ll be trained in 2 days!!” I can’t remember which helpful person told me this, but I wish I could let them know it did not work out well.
3. No underwear: The concept was aversion, that the child would not like the feel of peeing in his pants and would want to use the toilet. This one went the worst of all; you don’t even need a vivid imagination to know how this one went wrong! Mainly, it wasn’t worth the clean-up involved.
4. Toddler toilet seat covers: Don’t ask me why, but both my kids did not like these at all. I even got the cute Spiderman one but neither would use one and would sometimes refuse to use the bathroom at all if I stuck one on.  Fine by me, less to clean.

3 Things That Actually DID Help Train My Kids to Use the Potty

There are a few things I found did actually work both times.

1. Repetition/Reminders & Involvement: Asking first thing in the morning and every hour or so if they needed to go. This was probably the most effective thing for both of them. Also, making sure they went to the bathroom immediately before we left the house since one of them refuses to pee on the side of the road or on a bush like every other little boy on the planet, and the other would whip it out and pee his ABCs in the street when he could get away with it. This way we avoided both problems. I also love putting little ones “in charge” of their own training pants (as in, in charge of putting them in their room or in the closet). This guy is letting his wind up dinosaur inspect the package. 🙂 
2. Thick underwear/ training pants: We tried a few different types of training pants, some we liked and some we didn’t.  The most recent ones we liked and stuck with for our youngest were the CVS Training Pants. They were comfy and had a stretchy band so they didn’t pinch around his waist. They had different ones for boys than girls so they were customized be more absorbent in the right areas and also had a wetness indicator that would fade when he did have an accident. That last part made it easier for us to know when he needed a fresh one and let him see when he did a good job because we could show him it was still there. Kids love being praised and that certainly aided the potty training process. The pants also have easy to use fasteners that make them simple to take off in case you have a #2 mess to deal with, and they can be refastened if it was just a false alarm. This is probably my favorite feature! I’ve tried other brands of training pants that claim to be refastenable, but honestly I can usually only get a couple opens out of them before the fuzziness (for lack of a better term) prevents them from staying closed. These are different – I tested them about 10 times, opening and closing them over and over again. To my surprise, they closed as snuggly the last time as they did the first! This is a picture of the training pants closed after open #10. 🙂I think this is a huge win for CVS Training Pants! Since the goal is potty training is to get your child to use the potty without an accident, it’s a huge cost savings to not have to replace a pull up diaper every time you take them to the potty.
3. Over-celebrating: Every single time they did it right for the first week or so we jumped and danced and high fived. We didn’t do stickers or food treats but we did do temporary tattoos. We just made a big loud deal out of it, and they both seemed to respond well to that. It didn’t last for very long and neither one seemed notice when it faded, but for those first few days they couldn’t wait to make us happy by using the bathroom the “big kid” way.

My advice to those of you about to have fun, fun, fun by potty training your little one is to have some patience and some fun because there are a lot of other things that kids will stress you out about so get this one over with.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of CVS Training Pants.

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Cecilia Williams

Is a hard working mother of 2 that enjoys taking naps, solving puzzles and helping make this world a better place, one article at a time.
Come check me out over at my blog www.lazygeniusmom.com

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