Imagine if you were introduced to something new and it was a chore that had a lot of people shouting at you when you get it wrong, or people that keep belittling you and constantly nagging you to get this chore mastered… How would you feel? Would you even like to continue with this learning experience? Certainly NOT! Then how do you expect your child to master his or her baby potty training?
The key here is to make it a wonderful experience. In retrospect your kid won’t end up feeling as despondent as you would feel in the above situation. So in this post, I am going to mention a few suggestions to help you make it fun…
The first thing you need to acknowledge is: how do you feel when your child smiles at you, or when your child laughs or makes a funny face? You feel great, don’t you? That there is all the reward you need. In fact that in itself is your part of making this a pleasurable experience for you. That is your fun!
Now to make this fun for your child, here are a few possibilities:
- When your child pees, how about throwing some food coloring in the potty and then showing your child how his pee changed the water color. Kids love color and this is a neat way to make them feel cool!
- How about having a reward system. You can use a potty training chart for your child. Every time your child successfully completes a toilet session, you can put a sticker for the child on the chart. In fact, take your child to the chart and get them to put their own sticker themselves, they really love this. You could also give them a more tangible reward, like their favorite juice (This works in your benefit as well by allowing them to urinate more frequently.) or perhaps a salty snack or even a chocolate, as these would require your child to drink more water, again adding to your benefit.
- You could get a bunch of cartoon printed underwear. This helps by creating the desire to wear the underpants more than the diaper.
- Keep a favorite toy in the bathroom and motivate them by allowing playtime only during potty time.
- For poo sessions, you could have a funny face making contest.
- Glorify the “flushing of the toilet” and make up some story that goes with it, so that your child would want to flush the toilet, but only after he makes a pee or poo. For eg: You could say that every time we flush the toilet we are filling water into the little dam where the froggies live so that they can play nicely – Use your imagination, you can really make this one work.
- Keep a storybook in the loo, and read it aloud to the child while they are busy making a pee or poo.
- Praise them, give them super hero names and associate the baby potty training to their favorite super hero.
- Try to make the bathroom appealing by decorating with posters, pictures, etc.
- Let them play target practice… You can get some potty toys to help in this regards, or just use a cheap substitute like a puffy crisp eg: Cheetos.
- The lists are endless… the point is to take every situation and turn it around into a fun activity.
By making the entire process fun, you help achieve a few things: You remove your frustration; you motivate the child to learn and want to go to the potty as opposed to just doing a job in the diaper; you build your child’s self confidence and above all, you have fun!
I hope this article provides some helps you in making your baby potty training an easier task. Good Luck!
PS: Why don’t you leave your comments and give some of our reader’s ideas that you come up with.
