Potty Training Realism

Hi Amy,

Stumbled across your blog and I love all the advice and antidotes. Here is my problem:

My daughter, 20 months, is two weeks out from potty training ‘boot camp’ I’d say for the most part she is doing great. She can tell me when she needs to go and after the initial 3 days we have been fairly accident free. I say fairly because we might go 2-3 days accident free and then have 4-5 days in a row with an accident a day. Usually the accident is poop, but we have the occasional pee (with no signs of caring/noticing she had an accident) Also so far every accident has been at home and not while out. So, are we on the right track? Does it indeed take several weeks/months to ‘fine tune’ or did I train too early? I have tried googling and I have gotten many horror stories about regression, training too young leads to dysfunctional bladder and frequent accidents mean they just aren’t ready. If she is indeed not ready, do you just walk away from the toilet completely or do you put them back in diapers and still take them if they tell you too? As a first time mom surrounded by other first time moms I just don’t know what is a realistic expectation. Any advice is welcomed.

Thank you!

Every kid is different and every potty training story/situation is different, but yes, I think you are on the right track. This is all quite unremarkably normal. I’m sure there ARE toddlers out there who complete the “potty train in less than a day” or “potty train in three days” boot camps and absolutely never, ever have an accident again or any regression/backsliding/issues-with-poop-but-not-pee-or-vice-versa, but I really think most toddlers continue to need practice, and continue to have accidents due to forgetfulness/distraction/old diaper habits.

Real Mom Talk: I potty trained three boys using the three-day method. It usually ended up more like five days before we had a for-real “breakthrough,” and HOLY GOD YES, we dealt with the occasional accident for WEEKS and MONTHS afterwards. My last kid completely faked us out after the first week, then went a solid damn MONTH without a single success before snapping out of it. (And yet that still wasn’t the End of All Potty Accidents. Two and three year olds like to keep you on your toes, sometimes. Usually right when you’ve stopped carrying around a change of pants and underwear in your purse.)

Basically, the fact that your daughter is “fairly” accident free means that she’s “mostly” there, which is about all one can usually hope for two weeks out from the initial breakthrough day. Particularly when we’re talking about kids on the younger side, and kids who did not just magically wake up one morning determined to self train. So no, I don’t think you need to put her back in diapers or stress about training her too early. You just need to adjust your expectations about how independent she’ll be regarding the potty for a few more months. Probably three to six more months before you can really and truly backburner the potty issue, given her age.

(And for all the early potty training terror articles out there, the main concern is that we adults tend to forget how tiny a toddler’s bladder is, and hold them to an unrealistic toilet schedule. We tell them to “hold it” because it’s inconvenient for us to drag an 18-month-old to the potty every 20 minutes, even though an 18-month-old simply HAS to use the potty every 20 minutes because her bladder is small and her muscles aren’t fully developed yet. The problems develop when that 18-month-old learns to hold it past what her body is ready for, and then ends up with a urinary tract infection. I’m not a huge proponent of super-early training in general — mostly because it’s so much more about the parents being trained than the kid, and I’ve yet to read any real benefits of it, particularly for the child — but at 20 months I think your daughter can avoid any of the scary things you read about as long as you 1) don’t expect her to hold it, 2) don’t push for staying dry at night or long car trips, and 3) continue to praise her success while not shaming/losing patience over the occasional accident.)

Since she’s having accidents at home and not while she’s out, that suggests she’s simply forgetting or getting distracted. She’s remembering while she’s out because it’s important to her to NOT have an accident while she’s out, and/or it’s more important to YOU so you’re probably being more proactive about making sure she has frequent potty breaks and opportunities. So on days when she’s just chilling at home, have a potty timer. It goes off, you remind her, or if it has been awhile since she went, just insist she sit and try to go. I would probably set it for every hour or so, and if a couple hours go by without peeing, start setting it for every 30 minutes instead.

As for the poop, well. That’s one of those things. The Halfway There Kid, is what we usually call them around here, and it’s super duper common. Kids master the pee before the poop. Since she’s doing relatively well on the pee (and will likely only continue to improve with more time and practice), discontinue any rewards you’re giving her for that, and them implement an incentive program focused just on pooping on the potty. Watch for any sort of timing or schedule (and for those telltale Poop Faces, or anytime she suddenly runs behind furniture) and ABOVE ALL, make sure she isn’t holding it in or getting constipated. A constipated, potty-training kid will drag the Halfway There process out for AGES. So. You know. Make sure she’s getting lots of fiber.

Don’t worry! She’ll get there. Eventually. It’s a process. A very messy, damp process.