fishfish

My number one potty training tip is to start early. I love the book Diaper Free Before Three. Pretty much as soon as my youngest could sit, we would sit him on the potty after dinner. It was a good time to read him a book or otherwise interact, and half the time he would poop. We increased the frequency of putting him on the potty after meals as he got older and eventually took the plunge on the full diaper free Oh Crap method just before he turned two. Starting potty training early takes longer, but is a much more pleasant experience. I am so glad we did it when he was young because the minute he turned two everything was a power struggle, except for using the potty. The reason we decided to start early was because of the awful experience we had with his older brother, potty training him at 3. What finally worked for him was spending a lot of time bare bottom at home, with a potty in every room and completely ignoring anything that had to do him using it. In his case, the pressure was the biggest obstacle. Potty training caused so many tears with my oldest. It may have happened more quickly than potty training my youngest, but it was such a painful process. Starting early is in my experience, the way to go.

I was an only child in the 90s. I don’t remember there being much loneliness in it. In fact, seeing the extreme sibling rivalry between my cousins made me very glad to be an only child. It is really now as an adult that I wish I had siblings, both for myself to be going through these stages of life with someone I have a shared history with, and especially for my kids, who have no aunts and no cousins.