Potty Training: The Ultimate Trick-or-Treat

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potty training trick or treat


In this spooky season of trick-or-treating, let’s talk about the ultimate trick-or-treat: Potty Training (insert horror movie scream here). I think potty training is kind of like trick-or-treating for parents. There are special clothes, you have to ask extra politely, and there’s LOTS of candy involved. For some of you, this is a breeze (and I kind of hate you a little bit), or in other cases (like mine), it’s gross, takes forever, and tries your patience worse than a coffee pot that takes too long to brew.

I knew I couldn’t be the only one struggling, so I reached out to some friends who are also in the potty training trenches, to get some potty training scary/silly horror stories, and boy did they deliver! 

 

Location, location, location:

Just like kids can search out the best neighborhood for a Halloween candy haul, toddlers can search out the most inconvenient, most inappropriate time to show off their new tricks.

“We had just started potty training our little girl and were using diapers while traveling outside of the house. I went to a new chiropractors office, 1st visit. We had just arrived to the waiting room to get signed in. My 2 year old reached under her sundress and took off her diaper and then walked up to my chiropractor and handed him a poopy diaper.” ~Jennifer

“The other evening we were out in the yard and he only had shorts on because he was going pee in the yard and when I got back inside after being outside, I found a tick on his…”   ~Meg

 

(Yeah. I told my husband that one and he sympathy-cringed for this little guy.) 

 

The Power of a Good Costume:

When I was a kid, one of the hardest decisions to make was what to be for Halloween. There were SO. MANY. OPTIONS. And once I committed, there was no turning back. It’s a good thing there was no Pinterest back then because I’d still be trying to decide. For parents, once you decide to start potty training, there’s almost nothing you won’t do to get your kids excited about it, including performing a little surgery on your their toys:

“I made Bob the builder have an “ahem” so he could go potty also”

~Angel

Can we do it? Yes we can! I also had an anatomically correct doll when I was a kid that went with me and if she went potty, so did I. Clearly I had no problem caving to peer pressure. Thanks Mom.

 

Power of Persistence:

I remember trick-or-treating as a kid and it didn’t matter how exhausted I was, I was determined to hit “just one more house.”  This meant I had enough candy to last until Easter, so I think it was an effective strategy. I was determined to keep going until I had hit every house on the block.  We’ve been working on potty training for over a year now and H is just NOT interested. So needless to say, persistence has been my new bestie.

I swing back and forth between being totally accepting of his lack of interest, and it driving me totally nuts (it’s a rough swing and I’m getting whiplash). We’ve tried every motivator we can think of and he is unfazed by all of it. It’s making me wonder whose child he is because if you bribe me with food, I’m all in, but he doesn’t care at all about working for some m&ms. He’ll eat them, but earning them is a non-starter. He definitely didn’t get that from me. I’ll sky dive off a cliff if there’s chocolate and a margarita at the bottom.

I know he will wake up one day and want to, but until that happens, we just have to keep on trucking– one potty trip at a time.