Potty training woes

Potty training is one of the major child development phase that parents MUST go through. Some has it easy and some had really tough time getting over it. Since I have 4 kids, I have to go through it 4 times! And believe it, it's not easy and it's not the same for every child. First you have to make sure that your child is ready. You can tell this when he/ she can tell you about it, or asks you to change a wet diaper, and tells you when he/ she poops. Mostly this occurs between the age of 2-3 years old. The earlier the easier for you and the child.

The training will take just a few days before they get the hang of it. For daytime that is. For nighttime and naps, it'll take a while.

There are many many tips and guidelines which we can get online on this topic. I somehow found that the most efffective way how I train my kids are not in the list. Ha ha! OK.. so here are some "listed" effective ways to potty train:
1) Give reward for every successful "attempt" like candies, or favorite toy
2) Make a toilet game (???)
3) Hit a target (especially for boys) in the toilet bowl which could be anything that the child likes, including food (I find this ridiculous as you're asking the child to urinate on food!!!)
4) Be a role model.. explain to them that Mummy and Daddy do it the toilet. One of tips mention father and son doing it together in the toilet... errr this also I don't agree!
5) Go around naked for a few days so that they can feel it when it's coming.. hmmm??

And this is what I do for my kids.. well at least three of them. Another one waiting to go. I will make sure they are potty trained by the age of 3. But like I said earlier, the night time is more difficult and later.

1) Make sure that they are ready. This you can easily tell.
2) Pre-train them by making them go in the toilet for every diaper change and before every bath.
3) On the day of the actual training, make them go every half hour. This is to ensure less accidents. They will not do it every trip but just to make sure they try. During the training day, surely you will have accidents! So be prepared, roll up all your carpets!
4) Praise them with "good boy/ gal or clever gal/ boy" for every successful attempt. Or I told them now they have grown up .. this made them proud! But never penalise them for accidents. They usually understand how messy it is!
5) For night time training, they have to go before they go to bed, and I made sure I bring them to the toilet at least 1 hour after they fall asleep. This always work especially if they have milk or water just before they sleep.
6) I also observed that if the room temperature is too low, they will have to go more than once. I guess this is only normal as we adults face the same thing. Thus, I made sure their rooms are not so cold.

I've had good records with my kids using the above method for both day and nighttime. Except that the night time is rather challenging where you have to scarifice your sleep in the beginning. It also really depending on the child himself whether he's a light sleeper or not.

It's good to know all the tips and guidelines, but the bottomline is how you train your own kids. You know them better and what works in your household. Well, it's time to wake Syasya for the first hour of her sleep before I missed it. I'm still training her for the nighttime! Wish me luck for Omar's turn sometime next month!