My Thoughts on Potty Training

Today Camden went to the bathroom all by herself.

But this isn't anything unusual, she's pretty good about taking herself to the bathroom when she needs to go.

However, today, I walked in on Cam trying to wipe her bum from a big #2 in her potty.

Again, she's used her potty for #2s in the past, so this wasn't the biggest surprise I've ever gotten, but she went by herself, she didn't tell me she needed to go potty or ask me to come with her, OR ask for chocolate when she was done.

She went in, did her business, and that was that.


Camden is 2 years, 2 months, and I'm calling her officially potty trained today. 

We've had people ask us how she's potty trained so well at her age, so I'm going to respond here.


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These are just MY thoughts on potty training. 

I don't necessarily think that this is the 100% right way to potty train, and I know that there are tons of other ways that work. 

I also know that every child is different, every family has a different dynamic, and different things work for different people. What worked for Cam might not work for you, what works for you might not have worked for Cam. 

We got her a potty when she was around 18 months and when she would pee in her diaper we would take her diaper off and sit her on the potty - we usually got her there in time to get the last little bit actually in her potty. 

For a long time, Cam was just a little bit too short for her potty. She'd try to sit on it and it would scoot out from under her. We decided to let it rest until she was big enough to sit on it comfortably and not worry about falling on her tush. 

Side note..she's just shut herself in the bathroom to sing 'Jingle Bells' and go potty.

While we didn't ever push it at the beginning, we let her potty stay in the bathroom and she came with us a lot when we would go to the bathroom. I think she definitely knew what she was supposed to do in there thanks to all of the repeated exposure. 

When she was closer to 2, we'd take her to go potty when we had to go, but we'd take her diaper off and sit her on her toilet while we were going. If she didn't do anything, no big deal - up went the diapers, and we were off to play! 

If she did go, there was TONS of praise, lots of high fives, and always a piece of chocolate as a reward. 

She picked up on that last part. Chocolate. She would sit on the potty and just push and try and try and push and fart trying to get something to come out to get her chocolate. 

We would still reward her for a real try. 

A for effort, Cambo. 

The serious effort to potty train started when she reached 2. We bought several pairs of tiny underwear and started taking her to the bathroom a lot. If she got her underwear wet, I would have her take them off and put them in the laundry basket. We'd go sit on the toilet immediately after to see if there was anything left, and then we'd find some new underwear. 

I think the most important thing for us in our potty training was never to shame Cam. I've heard of a lot of tactics to potty train that involve telling a child that peeing or pooping is gross and nasty, but I've also known a LOT of kids that get humiliated and hide every time they have to poo. This often results in poops behind plants, running away to go potty, etc, and I didn't want Cam to be upset by something that everybody does..I just wanted her to do it in the right place. 

We put her in underwear with no diaper all day. Any time she had an accident, I would tell her that her underwear were wet and that we should pee pee in the potty. I would get her to help me clean up, and then we would go on with our day. At some point, it just clicked for her and we really don't spend much time cleaning accidents up anymore. 

Now she gets chocolate when she does a #2 or when she specifically asks for it after going potty, but otherwise we're not really rewarding her with stuff anymore. We ALWAYS praise her for going potty, I think this is pretty vital to most potty training methods. Kids thrive on praise (at least mine does). 

We still use pull ups at night but for the most part she's doing really well. She's doing great at telling us when she needs to go potty when we're out of the house and overall the process is going pretty smoothly for us. 

The take home message from how we potty trained Cam is:

Be patient, it will happen when kiddo is ready. Don't make it anything to fight or shame about, just encourage the good behavior and work together!! Be prepared for accidents, because they will happen, but in the grand scheme of things it's not the worst thing in the world. 

This is a REALLY LOOSE method for potty training..it's not even really a 'method,' but it's what we've done with Cam and it worked for us. It might have benefitted her to be a big more routine about potty training, but she's a pretty laid back kid and I'm very proud of her success.