Adventures In Potty Training

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I’m coming out of my blogging hiatus to talk about potty training. What better time than in the midst of potty training my 4th and final child? She’ll love me for this some day I’m sure. Okay, honestly I’m not going into too much detail other than to say I think it’s safe to say that my baby is day time potty trained. And of all of my kids she was by far the easiest to potty train. You know those stories you hear of I put my child in underwear and that was it, we never looked back? Okay well it wasn’t quite that easy, day one was definitely filled with a lot of accidents, but by day two she was consistently using the potty. A week in there was just the occasional accident and now those seem to be a thing of the past.

So yes, I’m happy to say at this point in time, diapers are just a night time thing in this house, which I’ll take. And I assure you all that I have been through the gamut with my kids when it comes to potty training, so for those of you who are struggling all I can say is stay the course. It will happen eventually. It might be little comfort right now, but every child is different and will have different incentives that will work. So don’t give up, it will happen.

But today as I was running to the store to quickly pick up a few things and I had all 4 kids with me I got sucked into the bathroom tour. Those of you who have lived through potty training a child surely know what I’m talking about. You will make multiple trips to every public restroom in every store during every shopping trip. We walk into a store now and I say, “Okay, time for the bathroom tour.” I will take this bathroom tour over diapers any day though and I certainly would rather have her tell me she has to go than have an accident.

Making the mad dash through a store looking for the public restroom is a bit exhilarating. The amount of pride my daughter expresses when she successfully uses the potty is great. So I guess I’ll take the bathroom tour that comes along with the potty training.

Someday I’ll probably miss these moments, but sometimes I wish I could just go into a store with all of the kids to quickly pick up some garbage bags and not have to make a pit stop. And I know that’s on the horizon. Really no need to rush it. But I was thinking the bathroom tour might be an over looked nuisance of the whole potty training process.

There are some things we have found she does not like about public restrooms. She’s not crazy about the automatic flushing toilet. A bathroom that does not have paper towels for drying hands is a bit of a nightmare. Those hand dryers are loud, some are hot, and some blow the air too hard, but all of them are above my child’s head therefore she ends up blow drying her entire body. She hates them so we have become well versed in the hand shake to dry our hands. She definitely has her favorite bathrooms in town, our local Walmart being one because it has a sink that’s just her height.

But this is the wrap up of my potty training days I think. Perhaps I’ll be involved in potty training my grand kids some day, but I think for this most part this is the last time I will have to potty train. So I wanted to take some time to share some of my musings on the subject and ask you all, what have been your adventures in potty training? If you haven’t gone through it yet, what are you most worried about with potty training?