Potty Training A One Year Old in One Week - Day One

Jan 17

Here's a quick account of how the first day of potty training went.

Now as a parent (especially a first-time parent) you receive a ton of advice on how to best raise and teach your child. We've heard anything from feeding, napping, to of course potty training.

Regarding potty training, we've heard to give stickers or a treat every time she pees, we've heard to ask her every 4 minutes if she feels like she needs to pee, we've heard to put her on the potty and just sit there until she pees. All of these sound great but they don't really work for a one-year-old. She doesn't yet understand me asking her if she needs to pee, and she is confused when we place her on the toilet and she just sits there. So instead, we're trying a different approach.

Family friends of ours have two kids, a girl and a boy. They said that potty training their daughter was a breeze and told us how they did it. For a week or so let your daughter walk around the house with no bottoms on, meaning no pants or diaper at all. Then, just like potty training a puppy, every time she pees on the floor to pick her up and place her on the potty and explain to her that we pee on the potty. This is all in hopes that she will start to go to the potty when she feels the need to go.

Being the pet parents that we are, we have already gone through training a puppy to go pee outside instead of in the house so we felt as though this strategy could work for us.

Day One:

Chris helped me gather all the floor mats, pull up the rug and put away anything fabric that she could pee on and we officially started potty training. In the morning she peed a few times and would say "Uh oh! Pee". To which I would pick her up and place her on the toilet and tell her to pee on the potty. Around noon when she started to pee she would stop and hold it and again I would put her on the toilet and say "Pee on the potty." By the evening, and 7 incidences later, she caught her self every time she started to pee and would run and sit on her potty. She has yet to actually pee in the potty. But already in one day she knows to go to the potty when she is peeing.

Now to get her to actually go pee on the potty and catch herself before she starts peeing is a whole other story. But, I feel as though, despite the numerous cleanups, that it was a success and she will be potty trained in the next few days.

In reflecting on today I notice that I'm already tired of cleaning up the piles of pee and having to constantly watch her so I can catch it right when she starts to pee. I need to remember to stick with it and not get discouraged and give up. As soon as I start putting diapers on her I'm sending her mixed signals and telling her its okay to pee in her pants. Which defeats the whole purpose of potty training and brings me back to square one.

I will write a full post on HOW we went about all this, using underwear, getting rid of diapers completely, waterproof sheet in her bed etc, once she is fully potty trained. That way I can share what did and didn't work, in hopes that it will help you with your little one.