I am living proof that a child can be toilet trained in 1 week. When Supernanny announced this on one of her recent shows, i strongly disagreed. Remembering how many weeks and months it took to fully train my other two children, i thought surely this cant be possible! What does she know? She doesnt have kids of her own anyway.
But as usual, Supernany was right despite her not having had children of her own and i was left suitably impressed by the fact that i proved myself wrong.
The one lesson i have learned through this experiment was that waiting until your child is 100% ready is absolute key.
So many people (myself included) want their child toilet trained asap and its just not socially acceptable to wait until they are over 3 years of age or older. All their peers are doing it/have done it so the natural thing is to want your child to be the same as everyone else, the 'norm' so that they dont look developmentally delayed. Add to the fact that you have helpful grandparents breathing down your neck that you and your brother were 18 months when you were dry and how late children are these days in getting this milestone achieved. None of it helps.
This is why people begin the process early and therefore spend weeks and months trying in vain to get their child toilet trained.
Now if you dont mind this labourious task and enjoy the mad dashes for the potty and toilet, the washing from accidents and so on then go right ahead. You may aswell stop reading this now.
But for those of us who dread the thought of potty training and wish for it to be over as soon as possible.. then carry on reading.
Sophie would have loved the above potty. Anything with Peppa Pig on it and shes hooked. She is Peppa Obsessed! But instead of the pretty pink peppa potty, she got the old dark pink potty id used for her sisters (didnt see the point in buying new!) and we cracked on with that.
Step one is catching the child and getting them on the potty. Sophie was incredibly angry when i proposed she sit on the potty and actually do something. She was well used to the comfort of her nappies and not atall keen on change. However i pressed on and within one day, she was using the potty all by herself with no prompting from me. We would then cheer and clap and make her feel very proud of herself as we emptied the potty and put it back for her to have another go. I also supplied her with large amounts of fluids so that she would need to go often and therefore get used to the whole thing.
Step two is adding clothing to the mix. I bought her some Peppa Pig knickers and put a pair on her. I showed her the pulling up and down motion and by the end of the day she had mastered it and was again, doing it by herself. So developed was her understanding that she quickly got it without needing much practise. Again this all came from just waiting until she was 100% ready to do this.
Step three is moving from the potty to the toilet. Again we had cries of anger! How dare i hide her potty in the cupboard so she has no choice but to use the toilet! We use one of those plastic toilet seats so that she doesnt feel like she's going to fall in but we still had screams and tears and tantrums over using it until she couldnt hold herself much longer and betrayed herself by going in the toilet.
Again after a few more times she was happy and pleased with herself and we had officially progressed from potty to toilet! This took place in the space of 1 day.
Step four is of course adding more clothes to this adventure. I put a light pair of leggings on Sophie and she near enough immediately had an accident. This was essential though to show her that she doesnt have padding down below as she usually would and that she would in fact get all wet if she doesnt use the toilet.
So we tried again and this time made it to the end of the day without any accidents.
Step five and the last step is of course taking them out. This is the bit i hate the most. What if they have a messy accident while in Tesco? you just have to take spares and pray it doesnt happen.
To test Sophie, i took her on a short trip to the vets to get Billy's special dietary dog food. She made it there and back without a single drip! hooray!
Getting braver i then tried her for a couple of hours at the local park. Its near enough that i can quickly run home to change her if need be. But no! She flew through that exam and passed with flying colours.
Yesterday i decided to try her all day while out at mums. This included two car trips and one detour to pick up Johns brother as we were having a BBQ for him as a send off for his entry into the Army.
Again Sophie passed with flying colours. She had one minor wobble when she cried because she needed to go and thought she wouldnt make it in time, but she made it with help from Daddy and that was her only minor incident.
There is no going back now. I can officially say that Sophie is daytime toilet trained in a week. She will go to nursery in September toilet trained after all!
Night time is a different ball game and one we will tackle shortly.. watch this space!
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