Great Tips to Potty Train Your Child

Great Tips to Potty Train Your Child.
By Alena Chauntee

If you have a young child then you know how difficult it can be to potty train them. I have a son who was particularly hard to potty train. I read lots of magazines and quite a few baby books. I also asked my friends and coworkers for tips.

Well I started to potty train when my son turned two years old. I bought some pull ups and put my son in them instead of diapers. I told him they were big boy pants. We bought a special potty chair that he helped pick out and I sat it across from the toilet.

At first, on the advice of some friends, I tried the M&M rewards. I bought a big bag of plain M&M candy and put them in a bowl with a lid. I told my son that every time he tried to go potty he could have two M&Ms. Well he wanted to go potty a lot. He also wanted the M&Ms. He never really went potty with this technique.

So I tried another idea I had heard about. I took him to the store and let him pick out 2 packs of underwear. I told him big boys wear these. He has to go potty in his potty chair and he gets to wear his big boy underwear. He was very excited about this and eagerly picked out 2 packs of underwear.

In the morning I told him we were putting his big boy underwear on. He was very happy to wear them and was so proud. I put just a t-shirt on him with his underwear. I then went and set the stove timer for 30 minutes. Once the timer went off I told my son it was time to go potty. He stopped what he was doing and followed me into the bathroom.

We kept repeating this process all day. He got used to the idea that no matter what he was doing. He can stop and go to the bathroom and his stuff will still be there when he returns. He is very much into video games so I would make him pause it and go to the bathroom.

That technique worked well for training him. We also started giving him stickers every time he went to the bathroom. I taped a big white piece of paper to the bathroom door. I wrote all the days of the week down the left side and drew lines to separate them. Every time he went to the bathroom he got to pick a sticker and put it up on the sticker chart.

He was so proud of all his stickers. We would praise him every time we went by the bathroom door. It also helped my son with his counting skills. He liked to count how many stickers he received everyday. I would just change the sticker chart every week. My son loved to help make it too.

Praise and positive encouragement really go a long way with children. It gave my son a lot of self confidence. I didn't have to fight him anymore to go to the bathroom and as a mother that felt incredible.