Skip to content

Grandma’s Potty Training Tips

I quite certain that you will find my potty training tips helpful, because as a mother, grandmother, nanny, and teacher I have had quite a bit of experience.  You will find that my potty training tips for girls are somewhat different than my potty training tips for boys.  However, in both cases the goal is to get your toddler out of diapers.  In the beginning, my advice is to keep your child in overnight diapers until he or she is completely comfortable getting out of bed and going to the bathroom unassisted.  Otherwise, you chance two results – bed wetting and middle of the night emergencies.  After all the hard work you did to get your child on regular sleep hours and sleeping through the night, I don’t think that you want to start that routine again!  So, take it from me, overnight diapers is definitely the way to go when your girl or boy is in the early stages of potty training.

There are number of ways to know whether your child is ready to be toilet trained.  The first of my potty training tips is to understand your child’s developmental abilities:

  • Can they dress and undress themselves?
  • Do they recognize when they are about to defecate or urinate?
  • Do they hide in a corner or go to another part of the house when they are about to relieve themselves?
  • Are they curious about using the toilet or have they made any remarks that they might want to try it?

These are beginning indicators that your child is ready to begin the potty training process.  My next tip focuses on preparing yourself and your child for the first step.  I suggest not putting a child on an adult toilet at all for several reasons:

  • The feeling of possibly falling into the toilet is a fear you do not want to create.
  • An adult toilet is too high for your child to use  independently.  Even if he or she has a stool, then you face the first pitfall.
  • Even if you use a potty seat and not a potty that sits on the floor, you are faced with the prior problem, unless you keep a potty seat on the toilet at all times, so your son or daughter doesn’t need to ask for assistance.

The aim of potty training and my tips are to help you understand that there are two sides of this stage.  From your point of view, I am sure you would like to give up diapers and all that it entails. Secondly, you want your child to mature and develop from the baby/toddler stage to the young child stage.  If your child has an outside program or goes to daycare, I am sure that both you and your sitter would like nothing more than to not have to change your child’s diapers anymore.

However, while all those are legitimate reasons for introducing potting training, the emphasis should not be exclusively from an adult’s vantage point.  Toilet training and all the other tasks that your child is able to handly by themselves is the basis of building esteem and independence.  Therefore, this should be a fun and rewarding project for both of you.  You’ll see – the first time your son or daughter relieves themselves on the potty, just how proud they are of themselves!

I cover more specific potty training tips in other articles.  For now, I will let you mull this information over, and perhaps share it with your husband – especially if your child is a boy.

Written by Brenne Meirowitz, BA, MA, MS