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Who’s ready to talk potty?!! I feel like I have been living in the bathroom. Today marks two weeks since we started potty training our first child so I figured now would be a good time to write up a post about how we conquered this. After our success, I can highly recommend the potty training in 3 days book.
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Can A Child Really Be Potty Trained in 3 Days?
Yes, it can happen. Will it be easy? Not exactly. But will it be worth it? Absolutely. You will likely have to set aside a potty training weekend where you dedicate the 3 days to this and only this. If you are able to, take a day off of work. Cancel all plans and if possible, doing this during the winter season might be best because you don’t want to play outside or stray far from the bathroom.
Of course all kids are different and you should do what is best for you and your child developmentally. There are enough pressures as parents so do what makes you comfortable. My guess is if you’re here reading this, you’ve already considered this 3 day potty training method or have researched the 3 day potty training book.
My hope is that this will make a great resource for other parents as well as myself when it’s time to potty train baby sister (who will be here in less than 3 weeks, crazy!). If you are wondering where to begin – go ahead and purchase this book – Potty Training in 3 days: The Step by Step Plan for a Clean Break from Dirty Diapers. You can find it on amazon for a great price with overnight delivery. What would we do without amazon? Also, thank you to our good friends who recommended this potty training book to us! 🙌🏻
“You are the parent. You can do this.”
Reading the Book
Start reading it now if you are done with changing dirty diapers and are thinking about potty training in the near future. I read through it a couple times before we actually began and it has great advice for how to prepare your child leading up to the big day. I say “big day” because it is a big day. The day you say goodbye to diapers forever and for good!
My husband and I decided together that our son was ready to be potty trained and we wanted to get it done before baby #2 arrives at the end of August. We knew that once she arrived, we might not have the time to dedicate to it and we would probably put it off a little too long.
…Chiming in here with an update after baby sister has arrived! You may hear a lot of noise about regression after a sibling arrives, we personaly did not experience this with our son. We are so happy with our decision to potty train before the baby because we were able to dedicate one on time to this.
We chose the 3 day potty training method because it makes a clean break from diapers and we wanted to go all in and make this process as quick as possible. I personally feel that going back and forth between diapers and the potty can be confusing for a child. This quote below really resonated with me, and gave me the confidence that we were doing the right thing.
Following a well-conceived and well-structured plan is the key to toilet-training success. With successful toilet training, your child will have a better self-image and better focus. When you can throw the diapers away after just three days, the result is a beaming, happy, confident child.
– Dr. Frederic Daum
Prepping For Potty Training
Wondering if your child is ready?
The author of the book, Brandi Brucks, says your child is ready when at least three of the following five things are true:
- Your child tells you when they need or want to be changed.
- Can remain dry for up to two hours at a time.
- Has one or two bowel movements during the day and they’re not very hard.
- Able to follow simple directions.
- Shows interest in the bathroom.
Our son was not doing the first one, which you might think is the most important one, right?! He actually was not speaking a lot and was a “late talker”. So if you’re in the same boat, that’s okay. By his 2.5 year old check up he was speaking in full sentences. Before we started the 3 day method he had sat on the potty but never actually peed in the potty. Brandi says the golden age for training seems to be between 2.5 and 3 years old. Our son will be 2.5 at the end of September.
5 Important Things to Note:
- Do not use a little potty, teach your child to go where they will end up going and not to be afraid of the big potty. I bought a seat and stool for him to use. I do not prefer the step stools + seats in one. They are bulky, I prefer something minimal that can easily be removed for others to use the bathroom. See below to shop all of my favorite potty training essentials.
- Boys are not harder to train than girls – THIS! How many times have we heard this as boy moms. I will go with what the potty training expert says on this one.
- Your child will not tell you when they are ready to be potty trained – this is your decision! This one may ruffle some feathers but the great part about parenting is you get to make your own decisions. For us, we felt comfortable with his readiness and age and made the decision to potty train. If you wait too long, you may actually be faced with more resistance.
- Pull ups will not help with training, they feel the same as diapers and your child will pee in it just like they did in the diaper. The one caveat to this is nighttime and naps, you can still use pull ups for nighttime and naps at first.
- Taking your child to the bathroom every 30 minutes and sitting them on the potty is not going to work, do you have to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes? The key here is pushing lots of liquids so that they get lots of practice actually using the bathroom, not sitting there frustrated.
shop the post
potty training essentials
Preparing For The Three Days
Choose a reward that your child will be really excited about. At first I was going to use raisins but he eats them almost every day so we chose gummy bears. These are our favorite kind to buy for the kids, and I love them too. I can’t say no to a gummy candy 🤣 .
You give one reward for peeing in the potty and two for pooping in the potty. Other ideas could be mini m&ms, fruit snacks or stickers. You could even do stickers on top of the treat reward if you wanted to.
Make sure you have lots of undies. You’ll go through a lot the first day. Just throw them in the wash as you go and run it. We started with 7 pairs which I was a little nervous wouldn’t be enough. I also ordered another pack of super cute boxer briefs.
It’s funny how excited he gets about picking out which ones to wear. Aren’t you excited to be able to spare the monthly expense of diapers?! YAY. Unless you’re one of the brave ones who do cloth diapering, kudos to you!
The Three Days
- Ditch the Diapers – First thing you do is go around the house and collect all the diapers with your child and throw them away (or at least pretend to throw them away). You can save them for your next child or give them to a friend. You want to include your child and explain the process. Remember even though they can’t talk, they understand every single thing you’re telling them.
- Start Strong – Put on the undies and tell him what a big boy he is and constantly remind him to tell you when he has to go potty. We often used the phrase, remember we need to keep our undies clean and dry! You watch him like a hawk, no TV, no iPad, no going outside. We literally put our phones in the kitchen cabinet because they are obviously a huge distraction. Being the teacher that I am, I wrote down a list of phrases that the book recommends and taped them on our fridge.
- Drink, Drink, Drink – Push lots and lots of liquids. We bought juice boxes, chocolate milk, things he usually never has that he would be excited to drink. The funny thing is he really only wanted to drink sparkling water! But we encouraged him to drink A LOT so he had to go A LOT. He peed 14 times the first day. I kept a log of everything, it helps to predict when they will have to go next. Just keep the log on the counter so that you can refer to it and write everything down.
- Always Be Pottying – As soon as he starts peeing, you run him into the bathroom and sit him on the potty and explain that pee goes in the potty not in our undies. It only took 3 pees on the floor and he was going in the potty! It was very easy to see he would cross his legs or grab himself when he had to go, so we would go. When you are paying attention to every little move, you quickly learn their mannerisms and can prompt them.
- Repeat – I would say it took a solid 2 days and day 3 things started to get easier. He had a lot of practice so he got the hang of it pretty quickly. On day 3, we went outside, allowed a little bit of TV time in the morning and we definitely let up on the liquids so he wasn’t going as often.
Source: Potty Training in Three Days by Brandi Brucks
Naps & Nighttime
Our son was staying mostly dry during his naps before we started so I took that as a good indicator that he was ready for potty training. We now put a pull up on him during nap and night time but we call them his ‘sleeping undies’ and you put the regular undies on top of the pull up. The book recommends cutting off any liquids 2 hours prior to bedtime. Also, staying dry at night comes with time and takes some kids years. To be honest, I have a hard time telling if he peed in the pull up, they are different than regular diapers – but he seems to be dry most nights.
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What to Do After The 3 Day Potty Training Weekend
Here we are two weeks later and we have only had a handful of accidents, I mean maybe 3. Once when he was outside on the deck standing at the door and started peeing (100% my fault because I wasn’t watching him). Then another time when he fell asleep in the car on the way home from the doctor. I tried very hard to get him to go before we left but he did not. Going #2 gets better every day. He knows he has to go and at first it would take about 10 times of sitting before he would actually go. Now he is pretty good about just doing it. Thank goodness!!
Of course this is way more work for mommy and daddy but it’s worth it and it worked! Now we are ready to start changing 10 diapers a day again when baby girl arrives! 🤣
Have you read this book or had success with other potty training methods? Would love to hear what worked/didn’t work for you! Sending you lots of luck, you can do it!!
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