My twins will turn three in March. That is the oldest that any of my children have been for potty training. My oldest was a breeze. She decided around her first birthday that she was done with diapers, and that was the end of it. She was totally potty trained by 18 months. My second didn’t get much of a choice. When he was two we found out that a baby was on the way. I decided that I didn’t want to have two kids in diapers (the joke was on me) so we started working on potty training. It was not his favorite thing, but by the time his brothers arrived he was pretty much totally potty trained.
Then it came time to tackle training the twins.
I remember how hard it was to convince Kid #2 that he should be done with diapers, so I was totally dreading doing it again, especially because I heard it was really hard with twins. I can remember conversations with my mom and telling her that I didn’t care if the twins went to kindergarten in diapers, because I was not doing it again! However, peer pressure started to get to me. Their friends were starting to potty train, and I didn’t want the last kids in diapers.
It was time.
We unpacked their tiny undies and found two Lightning McQueen potties. We stocked up on stickers with their favorite characters and made them each a chart. We picked a date to start and tried to come up with a plan. The first day was a major FAIL! We lasted until noon, and then the diapers came back out. I decided that we were going to hold off for a week and then try again.
Day 1 Round 2 went so much better. The twins had to sit on their potties every 30 minutes. Sometimes magic happened and we clapped and cheered and put stickers on the charts. Sometimes nothing happened and as soon as they walked away from the potty, they peed their pants. We spent a week locked in the kitchen where I have hard floors so that they couldn’t destroy the carpet. We read books on the potty, we made a train track in front of the potty, and we played cars on the potty. I think dealing with the toy chaos that is usually not allowed upstairs was the hardest part.
My goal was to stay positive and to only use encouraging words. I wanted to make this a good experience. The first few days were hard, like really hard, but we kept moving forward. Things started clicking, and the number of accidents went down. If Brigg earned a sticker, then Brooks wanted to earn a sticker. If Brooks sat down, then Brigg wanted to sit down too.
Things were going great.
Then they got a stomach bug! I thought for sure this stomach bug was going to do us in. They had no clue what was going on, and we had to be on high alert to get them to a toilet ASAP. (Sorry for the overshare.) Truth be told, I think it helped them not be afraid of the big potty.
We are now two months diaper free. It has been awesome! After eight years of almost constant diapers or pull ups or both, we are FREE! I feel like waiting until the boys were almost three really helped a lot.
If you are getting ready to embark on the potty training journey, remember that it will be hard, but it can be done. It’s going to be time consuming, and there will be times you feel like giving up, but you can do it. Stay calm and patient and try to make potty training fun.
I promise: your kid will not be in diapers forever! When your child is ready, you will join the diaper-free club, too.
