Parenting Australia

Toilet Training Triumph

Today I am confident enough to yell to the parenting community that we have toilet trained our three-year-old son!

Those of you who follow my blog would have heard the beginning of Noah’s toilet training story in September when we seemed to be OK with the wee side of things most of the time, but poo was a battle that we were not winning. How much a situation can change in two months!

Today we marked an entire week of no accidents of any kind, with Noah telling us when he wanted to go to the toilet every day. He woke up every morning with a dry nappy (we’ve been using nappies at night still). Success! This included three days away from home for the
Johanna Baker-Dowdell
weekend with a five-hour drive there and back.

It’s such a relief to know that he now understands how he feels when he needs to go to the toilet, instead of us constantly badgering him to go. He gets that there is a physical sensation associated with the need to do a wee or poo now, which was something we really struggled with early on in our toilet training endeavours.

Since Noah is such a routine-orientated child he is happy to do his poo every night at the same time after dinner (and after his favourite TV show finishes). I was worried that this would mean he would then refuse to do a poo outside this time, however he has told us on two occasions that he needed to do a poo during the day so I think we’re safe in that respect.

The true test is going to be when he does a poo without either of his parents around. We might be able to test that theory this week, as Harvey and I have two evening functions. I will be interested to see the results, but not surprised if we haven’t quite crossed that hurdle yet.

It has been about a year since we started toilet training Noah and that seems an age, but in the process we have learnt lessons we can use with Ethan (who is nearly 10 months). The main one of these is wait until they are ready to be toilet trained – let them set the pace and your life will be so much easier. Once Noah had bought into the idea, everything else came on much more smoothly.

Who would have thought I would ever be this excited about looking at poo in a toilet? Am I mad, or did you get excited when you toilet trained your child too?

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Johanna Baker-Dowdell is mum to two boys – Noah and Ethan – and combines looking after them with her work as a blogger, journalist, writer and public relations consultant. She owns and manages Strawberry Communications which started small in the third bedroom, but has grown into its own office space (in the converted garage).

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