Oh Crap! Potty Training is a revolution against all the crap you are hearing. Designed with the freaked-out parent in mind this is your realistic guide.
I’m going to first start out this review by recommending a website by the Oh Crap! author, Jamie Glowacki. Go here NOW if you are starting to or are in the middle of potty-training. Watch all the videos! You can thank me later.
Summer is usually the main potty-training season for parents who are planning to send their kids to preschool in the fall. I’m currently involved in this whole process myself and it has been going (gasp!) well. For me, potty-training has always been an anxiety trigger and I was not looking forward to it this (final) time around. Thank goodness I was given a suggestion to read this new book called Oh Crap! because it was more reading funny and realistic approaches about calming my nerves rather than giving a lot of potty advice that seems unrealistic. Even though I have done this once before, unless you have a miracle child (or suffer from amnesia), most children don’t magically potty-train in one day and I still have unpleasant memories. Regression and resistance is common and Oh Crap! was perfect at giving all-encompassing and relaxing scenarios that made this normally ‘crappy’ experience less stressful.
Potty Training is a HUGE milestone, one we should all celebrate and cheer on, but it is also a process with many potential roadblocks that Jamie talks you through in her chapters. I find myself referencing the wonderful Cheat Sheet reference and the FAQ section in this experience quite often. What I also appreciated was that the book has a “Dad’s Cheat Sheet”, which I encouraged Bob to read. Yay! As we learned from the first go around, Bob’s approach is, ‘they will go when they are ready’ and it wasn’t until we consciously made the effort at doing reminders and back-offs that potty-training became successful. Potty-training is about patience, persistence, clearing your schedule for a time and, yes, waiting for the enviable accidents before joyful successes. The main thing you should control is your own reactions to the accidents and learn to roll with the punches, through gritting grins and smiling sop-ups, you will get there.
Right now, Brie is having the time of her life using the potty. I don’t say this sarcastically. She has an older sister, friends in daycare, and teachers who are committed to stress-free potty training so that she wants to go and is really starting to recognize when to go to the potty before having an accident. I’ve had a few other tricks up my sleeve, which I will be posting about in separate potty-training posts, but let’s say helpful reminders and the RIGHT potty chair have also made a difference in our household. The main thing I have learned is to not get frustrated with set-backs and accidents. Go with the flow and if it does not happen – Oh Crap! – just keep on trucking. Before you know it, your child will be diaper-free and you, too, can feign parenthood amnesia at how blissfully easy your child was at learning to use the potty. But, just perhaps, this time you can give a parent a hand and recommend a copy of Oh Crap! to help them on their journey, too!
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