Potty Training Preparation

Now that Matthew turned 3 last month, I think it is about time to get him used to the potty and help him understand what toilets are for and where to make his ‘poo poo’ and ‘wee wee’.

He was never a fan of pulling down his trousers, taking off his nappy or running around half naked in the house. He always wants his clothes on and he is still that way  but I am going to have to get him away from that now.

I started off buying him a book about potty training. I originally saw this book on Rebecca’s blog and thought it was brilliant because you can personalise the character to what your child looks like and add his name. This way it makes it so much more personal and Matthew understands eve better. The book is for princes and princesses. In a nutshell it is about a boy who goes off with his mummy to pick a potty and big boy pants and learns to sit on the potty until a tiny wee comes out and even manages to do a poo in the end. This makes him feel like such a big boy. If you are about to start potty training your little one, why not check out Penwizard’s website. We read it nearly every evening to Matthew.

With that I bought a reward chart. It is from the same company. I got this ages ago, so it has been sitting in the book shelf until now. It is nice to give him a reward when he used the potty successfully. I might add a little bribery on to it though to get the potty training started a bit quicker. Recently I was speaking to one of my work colleagues. She potty trained her boy back in May. Every time he used the potty, he received a button. It worked great for her. Matthew would do anything for some buttons. I’ll see how I get on with it once we start this new journey.

I am going to take the journey of using briefs for the day and pull ups at night. First of all he needs to be potty trained during the day and when we have that cracked we can move onto the night. If I would use pull ups during the day, I think he would misunderstand it and pee into the pull ups which are nappies basically. I bought his favourite characters which are the Minions and Thomas the Tank Engine. Anything with his favourite characters on it he loves wearing and doesn’t want to take it off. Fingers crossed it will be the same with these briefs.

And the most important thing of all… the potty. Again one of his favourite characters, Mickey Mouse. Bought in Smyths ages ago. In fact I bought it when he turned 18 months. What was I thinking at the time that I can potty train him that early.

Let’s hope it all goes well and we need no more nappies (apart from his little sister)

Have you recently started potty training your little one? Any advice is welcome in the comment box below.