7 Free Potty Training Tips

My husband and I have three little boys. When the twins were born their older brother was only one years old. We had three children in diapers at once!

We offered each child the potty chair. None of the boys really cared for the potty chair. Your child may be different. All three of our kids wanted to use the "big potty." (Which was just fine with us as we didn't have to dump out the waste and do extra cleaning!)

Sticker Chart Method:
With our first son stickers worked best. We set up a chart for the week. Each time he used the toilet he got to put a sticker on his chart all by himself. The smiles were priceless.

It did take him longer to master not wetting his bed until he was four years old. If you have the same problem, just be sure to have a plastic protective cover from a discount store on your child's mattress.

Potty Training Outside:
When camping my husband taught our young son to go to the bathroom outside by a tree. Be very careful of this! I caught him by the dishwasher with his weapon! I exclaimed, "What are you doing?!"

Lo and behold, "I'm killing this fly!" he proudly replied with his pacifier to the side of his mouth.

There it was a fly on the side of the dishwasher and his stream aimed right at it!

What Age To Train Your Child:
We decided to wait until the twins were three years old to potty train them. The way I felt was that they would be old enough to understand the concept of potty training and it would not take forever to teach.

Every twenty minutes we asked the twins if they had to go potty. It was a very trying and wet time for one day! We went through many pairs of boy's underwear.

The red-headed twin mastered this in one day! He was determined to get the job done. He only had two nighttime accidents within a few months. We thought that was phenomenal!

His brown curly-haired brother had more of a difficult time with this. Mainly at night. He was always thirsty and slept so hard at night. It took him until the age of five and a half to not wet the bed. During the day he was fantastic.

For us, I think waiting until the twins were three helped. As I said children, especially boys, will understand the concept of going to the bathroom when older. Also, with twins it is more of a competition to see who can learn what first and be the best at it.

Potty Training Book & Video Tape:
I did write a children's book just for my boys and read it to them using them as the main characters of the book. This gave them the fun of hearing their names. The concept I used was explaining what potty training meant, how they go potty on the toilet, and then once they were potty trained they would have a cake and party! The boys loved it when I read it to them.

Or the library offers books for children you can read to them. Also, we watched a video on potty training. Our kids thought the video was one big joke seeing a "toilet", hearing the words "potty" and "poop" on tv.

The book reinforced what they were learning to do.

Follow Through With the Award:
Once all three boys were trained, I baked a cake and had a small family party to celebrate their accomplishment.

Cheerios:
Many of our friends swear by using Cheerios, especially for boys, in the toilet. The Cheerio gives them something fun to aim at in the toilet bowl. I did not even hear of this method until after our boys were potty trained.

Plus, I would think the Cheerio would help with messes all over the floor boys tend to have.

Have a Clean Bathroom Floor:
To cure this disaster, when the kids were five and seven, I told them if there is potty on the white tile floor each one of them were going to take turns cleaning it up. Once in awhile a reminder is needed, but this really works as the kids do not want to clean that "yucky" mess up!