Oh Sh*t: The Dad’s Guide to Potty Training – Part 1

Tommy Riles
October 2, 2012

Tommy Riles

Lives in: Los Angeles
Occupation: Comedian & Audience Warm-up, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Life of Dad Founder
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What follows discusses possibly the most frustrating and challenging part of parenting. Keep cold beers in the fridge. Don’t plan on calling anybody back for a while. Be ready to accept your house being treated like a urinal.

“Oh Sh*t: The Dad’s Guide to Potty Training – Part 1”

Part 1 of this series is titled “Three Days I’ll Never Get Back.”

When your wife / girlfriend / baby mama / lady friend and you decide it is time to potty train your child, you need to go for it. There’s no turning back. You need to fight now to relax later. And both parents have to be on the same page. My wife has been a star over the last few days, forging ahead, as the times have gotten tough.

We had multiple people, including my friend, Trent Hamilton, tell us to try the 3 Day Potty Training method, an e-book written by Lora Jenson.

Basically, the method from 3 Day Potty Training is positive encouragement. This can’t be an experience that your child dislikes; otherwise, it will take much, much longer. That’s the great challenge, though, remaining positive as your house is being treated like a baseball stadium bathroom. I won’t give away too many of the tips from the book…you should totally check it out, as it has been extremely helpful.

Before we started the program, we thought our daughter’s potty training was hopeless. She’s smart, so she knows what she’s doing, and she hated using the toilet.

Now, at the end of three long, frustrating, and exhausting days, our daughter has used the toilet successfully twice. Here’s the urination score:

Anywhere except for the toilet (including kitchen floor, basket of magazines, steps, kitchen chair, stool, outdoor ledge, on her dad and/or mom): 34

On the toilet: 2

Losing by a score of 34-2 may seem discouraging. And it is. But my wife and I have both experienced a win over the last few days, so I think we have turned the corner. Or I’ll enter her room when she wakes up this morning, and witness a defecation crime scene. (For the sake of the potential non-parent that is still reading this right now, I’ll spare you all the details of the multi-colored accident that my wife discovered in Babs’ bed during the second night.)

Let’s talk about the two wins we have had over the first three days…

On the second day of training, I took my 10-month-old son on a hike, as my wife stayed back in hard-core training mode with our daughter. My daughter left me a voicemail saying, “I did pee-pee on the toilet, Daddy!” Win #1! We thought we were on the right path. But what followed were at least twenty consecutive accidents (including an impressive 7 urinations within four hours yesterday morning!)

Last night, at the end of the third day, was Win #2. I have been giving Babs a large fresh sunflower at the end of each day of “being a big girl,” and I brought all three into the bathroom just before she went to bed.

Babs jumped off the toilet as usual, multiple times. She was antsy, but she had to go. I put her back on, and she tried to instead stand in the toilet. We sang songs, and looked at a coloring book. Then the flowers started talking to Babs about not being scared to use the toilet. Babs jumped off. Then she got back on. Then she used the toilet as it was meant to be used. And we flushed. Win #2!

Will we get win #3 today? Or maybe Wins #3-5? I have no idea what the fourth day will bring, but I know that with my wife and I continuing to work together on this, someday our daughter will avoid public urination.

*The picture for this post made me think… “Man, potty training must have been terrible for the first 1900 years A.D. Outhouses in the snow? Yikes.”

Image courtesy of Kristine Paulus

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