Haha, that was just a teaser title. We (Little Brother’s parents) really didn’t do anything to get our son to potty train so early. In fact, I have to confess, I used to have this weird idea that kids who potty trained early were just pushed to do so by their eager parents. I apologize for that unspoken prejudice. I stand corrected.
People always say that boys potty train later than girls. In fact, one pediatritian (who I was unhappy with on some other issues regarding Little Brother) told me that boys are typically 36 months before they are ready to potty train. Now that I’ve potty trained 2 boys I am of the opinion that there really isn’t a “typical” age to potty training readiness. Readiness is determined by a number of different factors and can be aided by some techniques that I’ll share with you next week.
So, how did we know Little Brother was ready to start potty training?
Well, it all started by happenstance. We moved to San Antonio in August and I just had the movers put the potty chair in the bathroom until I could find a suitable place to store it. Little Brother was only 17 months and was certainly not ready to potty train. So I though. He instantly took a fascination to the potty chair, and would lift the lid and sit on it several times a day saying “go potty”.
A few weeks after that the real potty training began. One day when I was in the kitchen I heard Big Brother talking to Little Brother in the bathroom. I peaked in to see what was going on only to see Big Brother (4) had taken off Little Brother’s diaper and was giving him Potty Training 101 (the lab section). Little Brother stood up, and, to my amazement, I saw that he had peed in his potty!
After that Little Brother began telling us when he was wet or messy, then he progressed to saying “I go pee pee” whenever he needed to go. We ran into trouble with #2 however and The Husband, Mr. Psychology, said he was probably becoming anal retentive because we were potty training him too early. 😛 I had another theory. Little Brother has a lot of food sensitivites and he had recently been having a bad reaction to something I’d been feeding him. The day after I eliminated the culprit food Little Brother got over his fear of #2 and it has been smooth sailing from then on.
There are several things I did to help him along (I’ll share those in the next potty training post), but we are content to follow his lead and let him progress at his natural pace. He still isn’t very reliable when we are out and about and I don’t think we are anywhere near naptime and nighttime trained, but I’m in no rush and am still amazed that I’ll have a kid out of diapers (for the most part) before he’s 2.

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