Stress Free Potty Training

Feeling Overwhelmed about potty training?

That would describe me 10 years ago when our first child was turning two and I was starting to see friends potty training their children. As new parents, we thought, “how are we going to do this?!”.

I felt pressure and panic and I definitely laid down my peace about this important life transition for our daughter.

I needed a straight-talking guide like this.

the LB way

I have something to share that some might say is controversial.

I don’t potty train my kids.

What I mean is that I have five out of seven children who are fully potty trained and I did not teach them how to use the toilet and I did not initiate incentives for them to use the toilet. I’m confident this is much-needed advice in mom world.

I don’t take a dedicated weekend to take off their diaper and just chase them around and give them lot’s of apple juice. ( Pretty sure that advice was in one of the blogs I read over a decade ago.) It said the best approach was to give them lots of liquids, chase them around, make them go pee on the potty, let them get used to how it feels in their body and things like that. I think some people call it the 3-day method. I don’t do any of it. I don’t have my own goals for my child’s potty training (except for us to all hang on to our peace!). There is no perfect time, but I wait for my child to initiate potty training and it has been such a relief for me.

I do not fret or even spend one minute worrying about my kids learning to go potty. Five of them have successfully learned and if five of them have learned without me training, then I’m really confident that the last two will also follow suit. I want to actually bring some hope to the moms who are feeling overwhelmed like I was over a decade ago. They’re all kinds of kids and all kinds of ways to get there.

I said this over on Instagram last week, but I was starting to talk about potty training after my good Instagram friend, Paige, texted me earlier in the week and she said, “Hey, my firstborn is going poop and pee on the potty. We’ve had no accidents and I’m so, so, so glad that I trusted you not to potty train him, because it has been so amazing.”

SO MUCH MIND MESS

However, the not amazing part that some experience is getting comments and some undue pressure from in laws, parents, maybe even the spouse or having a preschool deadline and things like that. I took this question over to Instagram and asked, “did you look forward to potty training your child?”

Also, “did you receive any kind of passive aggressive comments or negative feedback from other people who had a lot to say about your child not being potty trained?” I could not believe what was coming in in my DMs. 20% of moms came back and said that it was wonderful experience for them. They didn’t have anybody really saying anything about their child not potty training, but they enjoyed it. And then 80% of the moms that replied in my DMs said some pretty crazy things. They told me about pressure and snide comments they received from the preschool and grandparents…and even friends. 

Someone said my DMs and said that she went to visit her parents over the holidays and her mom (her child’s grandmother) had a potty chair and underwear waiting to train her two year old boy. He proceeded to poop in his underwear and that was the end of that. Lots of moms said that they had pressure with each child and some were even accused of being lazy. 

So, I’ll tell you the big secret to successful potty training. 

Ready? 

Don’t.

The child will initiate and they will want to in his or her own time–don’t you worry about that. They will eventually be so fed up with going in their diaper that they will initiate going potty. They have been watching you go potty for years. You know the joke going around about how moms never get alone time and toddlers follow you into the bathroom, like they don’t believe in privacy?? That is actually how you potty train your child. They follow you everywhere you go and they watch everything that you do and they see you confidently going poop and pee when they’re barging into the bathroom while you’re in there. 

LAYING DOWN YOUR PEACE?

The first way that moms lay down their peace when it comes to potty training is what is the best way to potty train. It seems like there is a different method around every corner. I’ve been very clear in the past that I am not a fan of moms Facebook groups. And one of the reasons I’m not a fan is because there are usually a couple alpha moms in the group who are using Facebook to brag about their children and the milestones and skills of their children. It’s like their scorecard in motherhood. In FB groups, you get a lot of insecure, alpha moms who claim they know the best way to potty train. And it’s step by step by step by step by step by step by step. There are helpful moms in those groups, but their voices are often drown out by the insecure, alpha moms. 

A first time mom usually feels pretty timid to potty train their child. She doesn’t want to have power struggles, of course. They’ve never done this before. Basic human psychology says that taking on a new challenge creates a situation where we question our abilities. We ask ourselves am I going to be able to do this? What we’re really saying is, what if I’m not able to do this? And what we’re really saying is, I’m not going to do this. I’m going to fail. We come to the table already laying down our peace because we don’t have any evidence that we can potty train successfully.

And so right there, that’s the first way that moms lay down their peace. We’re feeling a little bit timid just to train our children to do a new skill. And, with potty training specifically, we often feel a sense of pressure to get it done by a certain time for admittance to a school or program. The most important part of it can become the timeline in our minds and timelines and young children don’t alway mix well. 

You have a mom who is trying something for the very first time and there’s the pressure to get it done by a certain time. The other piece is a bit even more overwhelming because it’s more community driven. Right? What do other people think about me? How do I feel? How is it safe to train my kids a new skill? I don’t want to be embarrassed, I don’t want to fail, or I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t accomplish it.

There’s all kinds of things. And then you have on top of that, grandparents who, I jokingly say this, but have toddler amnesia and can make it more of a stressful time than it needs to be. I just want to tell you that if you have a mother-in-law or a mom that is like, “Come on, Johnny’s got to be potty trained!”, and you’re feeling that pressure from them or they make passive aggressive comments…I just want to remind you that one of the ways you can step out with total peace is to remember that toddler amnesia is real. It’s been a long time since they’ve had a two year old in the house. A helpful thought will be “I don’t have to make this mean anything about my motherhood.”

Kudos to you because you are to be in tune with your child. And you are called from the Lord to mother your child. Moms know when the child is ready. Perhaps God gives us this sweet reassurance in motherhood.

Your brain is probably offering you thoughts like, hmm, this was easy for everyone else except for my child. We’re the weird ones. Something’s wrong with them.. We didn’t get to see how all those three-year-olds overcame to get to that place of going potty. We tend to just assume that it was easy for everybody else.

We’re behind, we’re not going to make it, and something’s wrong with my child’s personality or physiology. And something is worse, something is wrong with my mothering. And I would tell you that, no, probably not. 

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR STRESS FREE POTTY TRAINING

I’m going to share with you my tips and tricks when it comes to potty training. And then if they work for you, great. But I’m just going to offer you a few thoughts that were so helpful for me as somebody who has potty trained, as somebody who has (ahem) not potty trained five people and they’re successfully going to the bathroom.

Anytime the child says I want to go potty or I want to rip my diaper off or I’m curious about the potty, roll with it. These are readiness signs. They are going to initiate when they’re ready and it has a lot to do with the child’s temperament. I will say mosts moms get concerned when they’re a little bit older, like let’s say they’re almost four years old, or they’re four and a half years old, and they’re still not showing interest. This is normal to feel concern. 

I’m not a parenting expert, I’m just sharing with you my personal experience. I had one child who was specifically afraid to go poop on the potty. Going pee was no problem. I don’t know if they didn’t like the sensation or they just didn’t like the process or being wiped. I remember praying in my kitchen and asking the Lord to help me understand how to come alongside her and help her. This situation demonstrated how the Lord is so helpful and so faithful in all things…even potty training.

So I was standing in my kitchen and I was like, “Lord, I can tell that my child is really battling fear with this.”

The Lord knows the way ahead.

He knows the best way to go.

And so if you ask him, he’ll be faithful to show you.

So I asked the Lord to help me and just help me to come alongside her and not bribe her. I wasn’t really interested in bribing her. She wasn’t motivated by that actually. She was and she still to this day is someone who had a fear of embarrassment and I think she was afraid of being embarrassed if she went poop on the potty. So me normalizing going poop on the potty was so helpful for her. I reinforced that this is totally normal and we’re not making a big deal out of it. That was where I learned the power of creating a vision or casting a vision over my children when they are learning new skills. And this translates to any everything, not just potty training. Her brain was thinking about overcoming and gaining that skill, which is going to be the brain’s work when it comes to overcoming any new skill or learning any new skill. I do this even as an adult and this has helped me just really enjoy motherhood in general when I cast a vision over my kids and then they chew on it.

They play this movie in their head of themselves doing it and it’s giving their brain time to think about it and entertain the thought. If your kid is afraid of going poop or pee on the potty, try casting this vision over them. What happens is they latch onto it and they begin to believe maybe I could do it after all. When you have a maybe on the scene, you have faith on the scene. Listen to that. When you have maybe I could do that, that’s a mustard seed size. It’s faith. And God says that with a tiny bit of faith, you can move an entire mountain.

A few months before school is going to start, if I were having to train up my child to use the potty before a school season, I wouldn’t mention to them you need to do this by school. That’s not going to work. But give yourself about four months ahead of the time to get the ball rolling before school starts. If you’re wanting to reward your child for good things like going potty or thinking about going potty or picking out underwear, make it a  big deal. Remind them how proud you are of them .Now that you know that you don’t have to train your child and that you can just let them watch you and you can cast a vision over them, then we have to really contend with the pressures that we feel from outside voices. You must learn to not lay down your peace when the outside pressures become loud. 

When it comes to any kind of human behavior, you have to remember that, first and foremost, toddler amnesia is real thing for grandparents. They are so far removed from a season and they have forgotten what it’s like to be with a toddler all day long.This is a full time job and this is a job that we do with delight, but it is hard. A lot of times, I have to remember it’s been a long time since grandparents have had a toddler in the house. It’s possible they forgot what it was like. In this way, I don’t have to lay down my peace.

Every child learns new skills in different timelines.I have learned that the safer of an environment that I make it, the more progress we see. I really try to break the the spirit of fear by prayer. And then I also like to come alongside and cast vision for them that they are overcomers. And we pray with them together. 

you’ve got this

Mama, your child is going to learn how to go potty. And it is possible that you don’t have to worry about any bit of it. I have children who successfully use the potty. They’re wonderful without any diapers, no accidents, and I will tell you, it is great. And if it’s when they’re 18 months, awesome. And it’s, if it’s when they’re five, also awesome. And I think we would actually all be better friends if we stopped using milestones like this as evidence of whether or not we are good moms. Because you and I both know we’re not nailing it. We actually need a savior because on our very best days in motherhood, we are still falling short. And that’s good news. That means when our kids do cross over that potty trained milestone, we can celebrate no matter what. Because our scorecard doesn’t rely on when our kids are potty trained. It relies on Christ and what He’s done for us and how He partners with us in the raising of our children. God sees you. He cares for you. He knows the things that are bringing you down and anxious. I would encourage you to stop today. Pray for a mom who is potty training. Pray for yourself if you’re in it.

And I just want to invite you into asking the Lord to show you how you could help your child through this rite of passage with all the fruit of the spirit.

If this blog post would bless another mom in the trenches of potty training, please pass it along to her! You can also check out my YouTube video on this topic here!