Final Thoughts on Potty Training

our potty-trained almost 2.5 year old

I mentioned before that these potty training posts are for me, since we'll be doing this again in about 2 years. This post consists of random things that have come up as we've gone through this process.

Honestly, this was way less painful than I expected it to be. He's not 4, he didn't fight the process, and he night time potty trained from the beginning. It's almost scary how easy the whole process was. Not that we're complaining, it's just so not what we expected. I really hope this doesn't mean that Ocean will be the one who waits forever and fights the process.

That said, waiting until River was ready to potty train worked, but if he'd been ready at 3.5 rather than 28 months, it would have been harder to be ok with that.

Having potty chairs out for months leading up to the real deal helped. He was willing to sit on the potty chair fully clothed if one of us was on the toilet, and when he was ready he was willing to sit on the potty without his pants.

We have squatty potties in front of our toilets. In addition to helping you poop more efficiently, they make great step stools for kiddos. Because it extends around the sides of the toilet base River is able to climb on and off the toilet easily, even when he's sitting facing the tank.

Loose, elastic waist pants and shorts are much more practical than stiff pants like jeans for quick removal. Pajama pants and shorts, fleece and knit pants, and so on have been great. If the cold weather was going to stick around longer I was going to whip up some more fleece pants, but since it's warming up I'll skip them. I may make some simple knit shorts though.

All those shorts I packed away last fall will get another summer's use now, as long as we can keep them up over his nonexistent bum. Without a bulky diaper to hold them up everything's so much looser. The challenge will be making sure he doesn't end up wearing short shorts in an effort as we try to find shorts that fit around the waist.

Along those same lines, pants are harder to keep up as well. Thank goodness for suspenders - they're so cute- and adjustable waist pants. His first Sunday at church in underpants I made the mistake of having him wear a pair of pants that was loose around the waist when worn with a diaper. They were getting short in the legs, but I figured there was a bit more time to wear them. Not so. They don't have an adjustable waist and are now completely unwearable (literally!). Suspenders only work on pants that are too long, otherwise the pants look like high waters.

I've seen a lot of advice to potty train boys when the weather is warm and to spend a lot of time outside. That wasn't an option for us, since we were on River's time line. When we went on our hike last week he had the opportunity to pee into the bushes while standing up, and he was quite intrigued. That phase of things could prove interesting.

Other posts about our potty training experience:
week 1
week 2
week 3
weeks 4 & 5