Potty Training & Toddler Travel

Dear Amalah,

I want to talk about potty training and toddlers and travel. My husband and I (and our toddler and new baby) are planning a trip to New York in (tentatively) September to visit his sister and her husband. My older daughter will be just over two and half. She is currently exhibiting a few signs of being ready to potty train (she occasionally tells me before she has to poop, but usually only when she’s in the bathtub, otherwise she just announces “I pooped!” She is clearly making some connections about how all this stuff works, but when we gently suggest that she could be done with diapers and use the potty like Mommy and Daddy she wants nothing to do with it). Anyway, my concern is I don’t want to miss the window for training, but I am worried about taking a newly trained toddler on a long flight and around a city where I imagine bathrooms are hard to find, both for the inconvenience for me and the potential trauma or embarrassment for her. I’m not in any rush to potty train, but it seems from your 347 columns about this that sometimes kids have their own timeline!

Should I try to wait to potty train? Should we postpone the trip until next spring and hopefully she’ll have total mastery of the toilet? (But, by then we’ll have a one year old to wrangle instead of a six month old). Or, and this is probably the real question, are we completely insane for taking a six month old and a two year old on a long, red eye flight to the most expensive city I can think of? (my general philosophy about air travel and kids is even if its horrible, its only a few hours and everyone involved will get over it. This was, of course, before two kids, and also a midnight to six a.m. flight is pretty unpleasant even for grown ups). I want to be the kind of mom (or at least the kind of couple) who can totally handle two tiny kids in Manhattan, and be up for adventures and expose my kids to new places and travel opportunities and all that, but really it sounds like a ton of stress and money, particularly for a trip that neither of my kids will really remember. On the other hand, we love those guys (my SIL and her husband) and it would be so nice to see them, and they haven’t met the new baby yet, and my husband assures me that New York is not as crowded and hectic and stressful as I think it is. It is possible that my (wonderful!) MIL could meet us there, so we could have more hands on deck. I did love traveling in the pre-kid days, and especially with her help my husband and I could even get some kid free time to explore the city, which sounds really fun….

so, to sum up: 1) how/when/should you travel with kids? 2) what, if any, impact should potty training have on said travel plans?

(Just quickly, this (and this) is me! Two and half years later and we’re all doing super awesome. Husband is sober and happy and an absolutely amazing dad – patient and fun and just a daily inspiration to me. I’m now a SAHM (which I love), he works 4am to noon just so he can be home with the girls as much as possible. I am incredibly grateful that our “big problem” is when to take a vacation.)

Re: Your last paragraph. YAY YAY HI HI I AM SO HAPPY TO HEAR FROM YOU YAY YAY YAY.

Ahem. Sorry. What was your question again?

Ah yes, so this is interesting, because we took a big family vacation early last month — all three kids on an international flight, with the airports and customs and long lines and craziness. Our youngest had just turned three, and had potty trained about three months prior, give or take. (It’s not really an exact science in regards to being “done” with potty training, if you know what I mean. It remains an ongoing process even after the big breakthrough/A-HA moment.) I packed some disposable diapers in our luggage for naps/nighttime, and the morning of our departure I suddenly realized I hadn’t even thought about what he should wear during the flight. All the disposables were packed and loaded in the car and I didn’t have any Pull-Ups. Cloth diapers would have required rethinking my already overloaded carry-on, I had no idea where a wet bag was, plus it was four in the morning and I made the snap decision to screw it, I’ll just put him in underwear and hope for the best.

He was fine! Totally, 100% fine. We made sure he at least “tried” to go potty at the airport whenever we saw one and we knew there would be a delay or restriction of access (pre-security line, immediately pre-boarding, etc.). He was unhappy about the lack of a potty seat (also packed in our checked bags) but he’d already had enough experiences with public restrooms that it wasn’t a dealbreaker. We just…held him over and let him go. I’d packed changes of clothes for him and dressed him in junky old playclothes that I could ditch in the trash in case of a disaster.

Honestly, it was my OLDER kids who were more likely to turn down a potty opportunity and then suddenly announce that they had to go right when it was super inconvenient. On the trip home, I refused to take no for an answer and stayed more on their case about it, instead of focusing just on my toddler. So, you know. IT NEVER ENDS.

(And then right after we returned, a story hit the viral news circuit about a 3-year-old being denied the restroom on a flight and having an accident in her seat. And in every comment section I saw about the story, people were questioning the wisdom of taking a child that young on a plane without AT LEAST keeping her in a Pull-Up, just in case, no matter how potty-trained she was at home. And I retroactively questioned my sanity for doing the very same thing, even though our trip was totally accident-free.)

That was by no means our first big family trip, by the way. And we definitely didn’t plan potty-training around it and (CLEARLY) I barely gave it a second thought, otherwise I probably would have picked up some Pull-Ups. We’ve taken planes, trains and very long automobile trips with all the kids, across all of the ages. Nursing, diapers, potty-training, all of it. We’ve been to New York, more than once. You’re not crazy and shouldn’t give your trip a second thought, if you ask me. (Which…you DID. So THERE.)

(A stroller might be inevitable since you have a baby and a toddler, but I will say that I personally found babywearing to be the way to go in NYC. I felt less in the way of everybody and parts of the city are admittedly not stroller friendly. If your toddler is still in the Ergo-backpack stage, DO IT. If you have to bring a stroller, make sure it’s a sturdy one with good wheels and steering for navigating curbs and crowded sidewalks.)

Traveling with babies and small children isn’t always the most fun, but it rarely ever becomes the worst-case scenario you worry about, and even if it does (like your 3 year old peeing in an airline seat), it still remains such a small part of the overall trip and you just…deal with it and move on. Out of all our flights and travels, there was exactly ONE that I would deem unpleasant — Ike was still a lap child, there was a lot of turbulence so we had to stay in our seats, and he was bored and tired and cried for some time. And there was simply nothing I could do for him. He didn’t want to eat or drink or play with anything I’d brought to amuse him and he DEFINITELY did not want to be restrained on my lap. And you know what? People were SO NICE TO US. The people in my row took turns holding him, gave him their keys and random stuff from their bags, other people made funny faces at him and assured me that oh yeah, they’ve been there too, or understood how he felt, because flying just isn’t very fun anymore for any of us.

So, IN SUMMARY, to answer your two specific questions:

1) How/when/should you travel with kids?

Whenever you want or need to. Don’t be intimidated. Do your best to plan for a variety of experiences, but in the end accept that you can’t plan for everything.

2) What, if any, impact should potty training have on said travel plans?

None. If she’s ready to train, let her train. Don’t push or treat your trip like some kind of hard-limit deadline. She can always wear Pull-Ups (and not to mention you can buy diapers/Pull-Ups/potty seats PRETTY DARN EASILY in New York, should anything become an issue), or it could be the experience that sort of…seals the deal and demonstrates to you that she’s got the potty thing down. (Not only did my kid remain accident-free during the travel portions of our trip, he also started staying consistently dry overnight, and then as soon as we eliminated that diaper, pooping on the potty when from a 75% success rate to 100%. BOO YAH.) Or, you know, she might NOT train and you’ll pack diapers for both kids and learn the joys of trying to change a toddler on the tiny, tiny airplane bathroom changing table. Good times. Good memories.