P is for Potty

B is for Begin! Beginning the practice of getting your baby to “pee” and “poo” in the potty is an exciting and sometimes scary thing. In order to begin, all you need is a potty or a toilet seat. At this stage, if your child is still in diapers, you don’t have to switch to underwear. Beginning involves taking baby to “poo” or “pee” in the potty. Awareness helps the parent take the baby to the potty when the baby needs to go. When you sense that the baby wants to “go”, be gentle, casual, relaxed. Be free of expectations. The idea at this stage is to get baby to start the experience. Be positive, encouraging and consistent. Avoid asking baby if she would like to go – most likely she will so no. Casually and positively tell baby “hey, let’s go potty”. If baby is completely against the idea, give it a break for a few days and gradually re-introduce the practice. When using a potty, be flexible about where to put it at this stage. Some children like to have the potty in their room, the ...

As soon as my younger daughter learned to sit, at about 7 months, I started getting her to seat on the potty. For a long time, nothing happened – however, I continued and made it a fun time for bonding. I wanted her to be AWARE  that potty is a place for "pee" and "poo". However, there was no pressure or even any expectation on my part that she would do anything. One day, when she was a year old, she “peed” in the potty. I was excited and clapped and danced. Every evening at bath time, I would get her to seat on the potty. I had no expectations – I wanted her to have a pleasant experience and associate the potty with good times. We had our “potty” time every evening before or after her bath as well as just before bed time. When Jo was 18 months old, she started to “poop” in her potty every evening after dinner. Gradually, she started to “Pee” and “poo” in the potty at home. Over the weekend, when she’s with me, she wears big girl underwear just like her big ...

My kids and I love The Sound of Music. One of our favorite scenes is the one where Maria asks the kids if they can sing - and they're like "no"...she strums her guitar to ..."Let's start at the very beginning...A very good place to start When you read you begin with  A-B-C". I believe that with Potty Training, ABCs are a good place to start. The ABCs are A wareness, B eginning, and C onditioning. Awareness is the first step in getting baby ready. Awareness is the time of exposure, learning, and observation without any specific action. It’s like job-shadowing..When we job shadow, we read and observe and ask questions – but we don’t have to do the actual work. The parent and the child get a chance to use their senses as well as intuition and instinct to get familiar with toilet training(for the parent) and toilet learning(for the child). Awareness gives both the parent and the child the confidence to take the next step – Beginning , In order to prepa...