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Published:
June 25, 2002

Potty Training For Dummies

Overview

If you could remember your own potty training, you’d probably recall a time filled with anxiety and glee, frustration and a sense of accomplishment, triumphal joy and shamed remorse. You’d remember wanting so much to make mommy and daddy happy, and at the same time to make them pay for being so darned unreasonable. And you’d recall feeling incredibly grown up once you got it right. Maybe if we could remember our own potty training, it wouldn’t be so tough when it came our turn to be the trainers. But as it is, most of us feel like we can use all the expert advice and guidance we can get.

Potty Training For Dummies is your total guide to the mother of all toddler challenges. Packed with painless solutions and lots of stress-reducing humor, it helps you help your little pooper make a smooth and trauma-free transition from diapers to potty. You’ll discover how to:

  • Read the signs that your tot is ready
  • Motivate your toddler to want to give up diapers
  • Kick off potty training

on the right foot

  • Foster a team approach
  • Deal with setbacks and pee and poop pranks
  • Make potty training a loving game rather than a maddening ordeal
  • Mother and daughter team, Diane Stafford and Jennifer Shoquist, MD separate potty-training fact from fiction and tell you what to expect, what equipment you’ll need, and how to set the stage for the big event. They offer expert advice on how to:

    • Choose the right time
    • Use a doll to help model behavior
    • Say the right things the right way
    • Reinforce success with praise and rewards
    • Switch to training pants
    • Get support from relatives
    • Cope with special cases
    • Train kids with disabilities

    And they offer this guarantee: “If your child is still in diapers when he makes the football team or gets her college degree, you can send him or her off to us for a weekend remedial course—and ask for a refund of the cost of this book.”

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    About The Author

    Diane Stafford has been a health writer for 20 years.

    Jennifer Shoquist, MD, is a family practice physician.
    This author team also wrote the popular Potty Training For Dummies.

    Sample Chapters

    potty training for dummies

    CHEAT SHEET

    Potty training is an important step in childhood development. As a parent, you need to recognize the signs that your child is ready for the toilet talk, institute a potty-training process, keep that process going, and recognize when your child is almost there. Along the way, you need to make sure that your child knows potty-trianing terminology, be able to spot problems that need medical attention, and separate potty-training myths from reality.

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    Articles from
    the book

    Potty training has a long, long history — the first babies on the planet were potty trained. In that long history, a lot of myths have sprung up, although many of the most prevalent seem to be modern creations. The most five common myths are debunked in the following table: Myth Reality Put your baby (12–18 months) on the potty and she’ll learn what’s up.
    Ask any parent who has taught a child to use the toilet (one who is truthful, anyway), and you'll hear that kids have many pee and poop accidents. Just like when you were learning to drive and didn't get the gist of parallel parking right away, these tots are total novices, and should be treated with gentle understanding when they goof up.
    Potty training can be frustrating for both you and your toddler. Success comes when you keep your expectations realistic and your attitude positive. Use the tips in the following list to help make your potty-training time a success: Take on a laidback attitude for the potty-training show. Your chickadee is the star, hitting her mark.
    Keep an open mind as you check out your potty-chair choices: seats that attach to the big toilet, little potty chairs — and don't forget that you can always use that hand-me-down chair (from an older sibling or cousin), and let little sweetkins personalize it with stickers, making the throne hers alone. Encourage your trainee to sit on different chairs to check out size.
    Handling the physical aspect of training a child with a disability is wildly different with individual kids, depending on the disability. You may need to provide high-tech props that facilitate movement from walker or wheelchair to the toilet (see the "Working with Special Gear" section in this article.) On the other hand, your child may need nothing more than some bars to grab onto when she's sitting down — and your friendly assistance.
    Potty training is an important step in childhood development. As a parent, you need to recognize the signs that your child is ready for the toilet talk, institute a potty-training process, keep that process going, and recognize when your child is almost there. Along the way, you need to make sure that your child knows potty-trianing terminology, be able to spot problems that need medical attention, and separate potty-training myths from reality.
    Some kiddos' potty programs are thrown off track by outside caregivers who really, truly mean well — but they just don't get why you think consistency from home to daycare is such a big deal. However, whether caregivers understand or not, most are willing to listen to your comments. Tell them that you believe that changing approaches will mix up your tiny tyke who is barely used to using the toilet, anyway.
    Potty training can be broken down into steps, just like any other learning process. The first step is to choose a weekend to devote to getting your child potty-trained, one that you and your child can spend focusing on meeting the potty-training challenge. The following very broad steps outline the four basic tasks: Have your little doll teach her little doll how to use the potty.
    Having a potty-trained toddler is a day every parent longs for, but you can’t rush the process. Wait for signs that your child is ready to tackle this big challenge. Watch for the signs in the following list; the first five are absolutely essential: Stays dry at least two hours Gets bummed by wet or messy
    Potty training forces you and your toddler to focus on waste elimination — a normal yet often messy process. Sometimes, this focus on toilet habits can bring to light issues that need the attention of a trained medical person. Take your tot to the doc when She hasn’t had a bowel movement (BM) in three days. He strains when trying to pee or poop.
    Your toddler will eventually be potty trained, and maybe sooner than you expect if you can devote a weekend to the training process. Recognize your child’s small successes, and know that when you start seeing the behaviors in the following list, your child is nearly trained: He tells you when he’s gone in his undies.
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