>Potty Training for Dummies
>Lately, I’ve been checking out children’s books from the library on potty training. Baby and I read together about little Maria or little Jane or little Arthelle, all of whom manage to go from diapers to underwear in the space of about five minutes. Baby and I would talk about the books afterward and within a week, I had somehow managed to get Baby to tell me when she was about to go poo poo.
“Mommy, mommy! I go poo poo!”
“Okay, Baby, do you want to go poo poo in the potty now?”
“Nooooo!” She would wave her hand at me dismissively. “I go poo poo in my diaper!”
Apparently, that was my cue to turn the other way and give the girl some privacy.
Funny. This never happened in any of the books we had read.
For weeks, it’s continued this way. I finally realized I’d have to just chuck the books and formulate my own approach to potty training. I called it The Naked Baby Method.
Lately, Naked Baby has surpassed Ring Around the Rosie as Baby’s favorite game. After her bath, we let her run around the house naked for a few minutes while we pretend to chase her.
“Naked Baby!” she screams, waving her arms above her head and trotting along on her fat little legs. “Naked Baby! Naked Baby!”
When I finally scoop her up to put on her diaper, she wriggles and cries and whines, “I wan’ be Naked Baby!”.
“I have to put on your diaper,” I say. “But when you start going to the potty like a big girl, you can be Naked Baby as long as you want.”
And for the first time, I can tell by her face that she’s thinking going to the potty might not be such a bad idea, after all.
So this morning, we were playing when she stopped and said, “I wan’ play naked baby.”
“You can be naked baby after you go pee pee in the potty,” I said. “Do you want to go pee pee?”
She though for a minute. “Yeah. I wan’ go pee pee in potty.”
We went in the bathroom together. She looked dubiously at her Fisher Price potty in the corner.
“Okay, mommy’s going to go pee pee now,” I said. “Do you want to go pee pee?”
“Yeah.”
I took off her diaper and sat down. She sat down on her potty. Within seconds, she was back up and running out of the bathroom.
“Naked babeeeee!” I heard her say as she rounded the corner.
“Baby, come back here!” I shouted uselessly. I couldn’t chase her, unfortunately, because I was stuck. I had some um. Unfinished business.
“I said, come back here!” I tried to sound authoritative. No answer.
“Baby?” I said nervously. “Baby!” Nothing.
Quickly I finished up and ran to find her. She was in her room, rubbing a clean diaper on the rug. What the…
“Mommy, I went pee pee!” she said proudly.
I felt the rug. It was wet. This was not part of the Naked Baby Method. Oh no. This would not do at all.
And yet, I feel a weird sort of pride about the whole incident. I have a strange desire to call friends and family members with the news.
“You’ll never guess what Baby did today! She went pee pee on her rug! Isn’t she so smart! I’ll be e-mailing pictures later!”
Because now my baby is rug trained. I have rug trained my two-year-old, using my patented Rug Training Method. And that’s pretty impressive. Right?
>Ha! That is so funny! She is adorable!I used to babysit a three-year-old who always wanted to play “Naked Princess”. That was how you got her to put her pjs on. She would take all her clothes off and run around her parents’ bedroom being a naked princess. I would die laughing. Luckily, she was already potty trained when I met her.
>I wrote about my private (still in diaper) pooper just recently. However, she REF– USES to get her diaper changed – I have to chase her around.I can get her to pee on the rug – or in the potty if I just carry it around with me everywhere while she’s naked.You might try that. 🙂 heh.
>Hey, rug trained is better than not trained at all. Right? Right?My kid was rug trained for several months, too. 😉
>ROFLMAO!!!I had to train my 3 girls and each one was different and I swear I have no idea how I did it either time and I’m still recalling memories of pee on rugs, carpets, beds, sisters, car. I think my brain couldn’t handle the horror and so it blanked out. So all I can say is congrats and I hope you live through it. My youngest one was Naked baby too and she LOVED peeing on the carpet and don’t get me started when she decided she was a dog. I’m trying to keep those memories repressed.
>Nobody could have done it better. Nobody.
>Hilarious! And not just because I don’t have to clean the rug 😉
>Hmm…maybe this is what happened to my cat…I rug trained her? I’d be more forgiving if it was my two-year-old, actually!Mine talks about the potty and wants to sit on hers when I go and anytime she’s in the bathtub she urgently needs to go. We sit there and nothing happens.I’m getting past her party this weekend and then we’ll start getting serious about this stuff. If you want a funny video about going potty, check out Bear in the Big Blue House’s one on the subject. It’s a favorite in our house.
>LOL Well, at least she has the concept of peeing somewhere other than her diaper. ;^) My son used to take the changing pad out of our travel bag, place it on the floor, and quietly pee on it. Apparently he also peed on the dog’s blanket, which would explain why the dog never wanted to sleep there. (The kiddo copped to this just during the past year or so.) Anyway, I love the Naked Baby game and I bet she’ll catch on soon. Very creative!
>LOL! I tried the nekked baby method I found the No more Diapers method to work better. SHE didn’t want to pee or poop on herself so she used the potty. Can’t say it will work on all kids though;)
>you ABSOLUTELY crack me up. I love naked babies. They’re so cute. Except the peeing on the rug thing.
>When I first started reading this post, I thought Good! Some tips! Alas, I will have to go to the library. LOL!
>I’m thinking of just buying stock in Huggies and letting her wear them until she gets mocked by her 7th grade peers…
>I do SOOOOOOOOO not miss those days. Good luck! =)
>I’ve been neglecting my blog reading. Looks like you’ve been firing off some great ones these past few days!For potty training baby. I’m thinking maybe newspaper?
>Here is the unsolicited story of how my naked baby finally achieved potty-trainingdom after I wanted to kick that woman who wrote about her little girl’s potty training with cutesy boo-boo words and pictures.I started giving MYSELF chocolate chips after I went to the bathroom and I ate them right in front of Girlie. I would say very sweetly, “Boy, I hope you get to have some chocolate chips today.” Chomp, chomp. “These sure are yummy.” She was trained almost instantly.
>I hate those potty books. The worst is one with a little boy named Henry, which OF COURSE people gave us like 17 copies of, who not only potty trains on the FIRST DAY but then uses bad grammar to talk about using the potty! It made me want to spit every time I read it. Which was every freaking day for nearly a year, until my Henry was FINALLY potty trained.Naked Baby is so much sweeter, even with the peeing on the rug.
>LOL! Boy am I glad those days are over!LBC
>Impressive indeed!!I found a book with a red head little girl with the same name as my daughter. She thought it was so cool that a book was written about her that she wanted to act it out. Result – pee pee in the potty. The poop went on the rug. KIDDING!
>My, you have so many comments! Now the pressure is off to be witty like those who have come before me.When potty training our dog, we purchased one of these hippie books. One such writing instructed us to put an UNLIT MATCH in our dog’s anus to encourage him to poop it out outside.RUDENESS!!Fast forward to my daugther’s potty training and I wouldn’t DARE pick up one of those books. It took a long time, only because she didn’t want to give up the diapers. With love and encouragement it’ll happen. Just not in a chapter. Damn books.
>I think it’s adorable she was so proud…I can just picture it! At least it wasn’t poop on the rug.. Now that ain’t so adorable.
>see, this is why I am terrified of the much-touted naked baby method. Oh yes, I’ve heard many suggestions to let them run around diaper-free and place a potty somewhere convenient. But I just don’t want to clean it up! Am I too lazy to really close the deal on potty training?
>That just made me laugh out loud. And that’s quite a feat because just the words “potty training” make me want to cry. In a heap of neverending sobs. Congrats!
>Good for you and Baby!We did it the naked way in addition to bribery with M&M’s and then chocolate chips. The pooping was the hardest part for her.I have no plans to potty train Peaches. It will be up the Baby Girl to do it. I figure I’ll pay her $10 and she can do it since Peaches wants to do everythign Baby Girl does.
>LOL! This is what I’m going thru with our 2 year old too. I bought the Dora toilet seat insert thinking she’d LOVE to sit on Dora and pee. Wrong. She likes to put it over her head and run around. It’s fantastic when the UPS guy shows up and here’s Chelsea with a red Dora toilet seat insert around her neck. And when she puts it down, the 21 month old puts it over HER head.
>My girls were potty trained early. The oldest at 12 months the youngest at 18 months (but she needed pullups at night.) They both were ready and had the hang of using the potty fairly quickly (a week or so). I have been told it is easier to train a boy so I guess we’ll see in about a year or two.
>Interesting, Angie. I’ve been told it’s much harder to train a boy, but I have a feeling you won’t have any trouble… 🙂
>OH MY GOD. i love it. …she was cleaning it up with the diaper. now that’s some creative problem-solving skills right there. 😉
>Like others, we went the naked bottom route. She didn’t pee on the rug very often, but she did like to run outside and pee on the grass. Thank goodness I have no close neighbours. The Toddler is very nearly completely potty trained, but we’re still working on the poop part. And I used bribery with Freezy Pops as well. Whatever works!!
>At least you know she’s trainable. (I’m a glass-half-full kind of person…)
>Oh Jesus, I am lmao! “Rug trained”! Perfect.I have the hardest time with potty training. I just don’t get why they don’t get it. I feel like I should just point to the potty, explain how it’s much better for all parties involved, and something in the kid should click. I found myself with all 3 kids questioning their intelligence during potty training. Damn – what’s not to get? LOL
>That is one smart kid – she waited until you were “trapped on the pot” and took off. Maybe lock the bathroom door next time or you need to “just pretend” in case she makes a run for it you can make a grab for her. Great story!!
>I AM IN THE PROCESS OF TRAINING OUR FIFTH SON. THAT MAKES I EASY RIGHT? WRONG. TRUTH IS I DON’T REMEMBER A THING FROM THE FIRST FOUR TIMES. WE ARE DOING THE NAKED BOTTOM THING AND ITS GOING VERY WELL! NOT ONE ACCIDENT. UNTIL YOU PUT PANTS ON HIM! I WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU GO FROM NAKED TO PANTS?
>Oh by the way if you have the grandparents living near by you may want to discourage any visits while doing the naked baby thing. My dad totally doesn’t get it even after explaining it to him! Guess in his day they just didn’t have naked kids running around.
>I absolutely LOVED your blog!!!Right down to the photo at the heading… AWESOME!!!!I think that it is pretty cool too that Baby decided to clean up the mess with her clean diaper.. like “it’s supposed to be in here, right”???How ficken cute!!!