I am no expert at potty training, but we are in the midst of the switch to underwear with our second child at the moment and I thought I’d share something unique that we do to make things easier:
I bring a potty bag with us whenever we leave the house with the toddler. It contains the following:
- Extra pairs of underwear
- Extra pairs of pants
- A plastic bag
- Wipes
- Potty treats
- The insert for a Bjorn potty chair
That last one is the one we get a million comments on. I pull out the white part of the chair and just stick it in a plastic bag, and then in the potty bag I pack. With help, my two year olds have been able to balance on it and do their thing nearly anywhere.
Ways I’ve used it so far:
- Our first outing since the switch to underwear this time around was to an older sibling’s soccer game. Instead of having to haul a panicked toddler and a baby all the way to the porta potties (only to have an even more panicked toddler when she saw the porta potty), I discreetly whipped that insert out, pulled down her pants and she did her business right next to the stroller. We ended up with three false alarms and dry underwear at the end of the game, and I barely had to take my eyes off the field. Win.
- We travelled to Mexico, Guatemala and Belize with a fairly newly-trained two year old a few years ago and that insert let us easily pull over to the side of a road on long drives or bypass sketchy bathrooms when needed. No drama.
- Earlier this week I found myself needing to nurse a baby while running errands, so I fed him in the car in the grocery store parking lot. My older girls were contentedly buckled into their carseats reading books. Suddenly I hear from the backseat “My need to go potty!”. I put down the baby, whipped out the potty and my two year old did her thing right there in the parking lot between cars where nobody even noticed. I buckled her back into her car seat, finished nursing the baby and we finished errands as planned. It sure beat hauling everyone (including a screaming, hungry baby) inside and trying to locate a bathroom while counting on the strength of a 2 year old’s bladder. 🙂
What about you? Any tips to making potty training on the go easier?
Be honest: Would you be weirded out if a lady next to you let her two year old pee on the sideline of a soccer game? In my defense, we do phase this out pretty quickly and get our children used to public bathrooms, porta potties, automatic flushers, etc. To a newly trained kid, though, each of those can be a big deal and I hate to throw up extra obstacles early on in the process.