I’ve been talking about how Kid #2 is curious in the potty on Facebook and maybe Instagram too. In some of my groups, I suggested maybe I would break down and try the 3-day potty training strategy, but that didn’t pan out. I don’t have time to read a book or be consistent. 

Context: Kid #2 is a girl. She’s 21 months old. 

I’m just not a rigid structure type mama.

I don’t have to be.

I’m not the type of person to stick to something and follow a strict routine. It’s why potty training failed for kid #1.  Sure, that’s not the best characteristic to have as a mom of toddlers, but it happens. It’s why I’m terrible at sleep training, building habits, and probably why my kids are wild beasts.

10 Reasons Not to Sleep Train a Baby

Reasons Why 3 Day Potty Training didn’t Happen 

1. Staying home for 3 days and never going anywhere will make me clinically insane. 
2. By the time noon rolls around, I’m so down with it. I would be frustrated and upset about the entire process and the twenty-minute timer would be making me batty. 
3. I  have the luxury of being a stay at home mom which means I can do whatever I want whenever I want. Some parents need to potty train because of preschool or daycare commitments. But I don’t have those social pressures.

Basically, it just added more pressure into my life than I wanted. I’m already tapped out.

My Strategy

To give her the option, encourage her lead, and continue to role model positive bathroom habits. 

My strategy is engrained with the idea of choice.

• She can choose diapers, underwear, naked butt, or training pants.
• She can choose to use the small potty or the big potty.
• She can choose to make a mess but to clean it up.
• She can choose to tell us, or to be uncomfortable in her wet diaper.

We let her watch us use the potty and talk to her about the process because she’s learning too.

We help her clean up her messes and take her poop to the bathroom. We talk about how next time we’ll make our way to the toilet in time. We encourage conversation about the potty all day. Check out 5 reasons accidents happen. 

We are using a small potty with her because she seems more comfortable with it. My oldest didn’t care for, but it seems to be something that works for her.

Besides that, she’s still very young, and with my first, we did take this strategy, and it did take a year to potty train him. It worked out great, and once I could shake the stress of the expectation that I needed to go from diapers to underwear overnight, then I was confident. 

My family uses cloth training pants because they work for us. Check out all my reviews here and why cloth training pants were a helpful choice with my first. 

You don’t need to go from diapers to underwear overnight, it’s okay if it takes longer than three days to pick up this new habit. It’s probably a healthier happier transition; however, I’m not a doctor or specialist.

Do what works for your family, and maybe it’s this. 

The Personal: She’s not really ready.

Sure, you can potty train a 20-month-old girl in a weekend, and I think Kid #2 would be easily trained to do so, but she’s not ready. 

She might be showing some signs of readiness – she tells us after a pee or a poop. She clambers onto the toilet with ease. She’s trying to dress and undress.

I think many people will disagree with me on some of these things I think make a kid ready, and that’s okay. These are things I want in my children before we own potty training. When my first was able to break through these barriers, we really nailed potty training. 

• She can’t hold her bladder for longer than 20 minutes. 
• She doesn’t really know what to do on the toilet seat.
• She doesn’t have any communication tools to effectively tell me she needs to pee. 
• She’s unable to remove her underwear or even loose fitting pants. 

We’ll keep helping her learn these skills over the coming weeks and months, and I hope she’s quicker than her brother. But then, I’m also a cloth diaper blogger and cloth diaper podcaster… Just kidding, I wont let those passions keep me from potty training my child. 

What’s your potty training strategy?

I’d love if you shared not because I need advice but because it’s important to know it’s not this or that, it’s a little of everything and finding what works for you and your family. 

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