What Are the Secrets to Potty Training??

I thought I transcended being surprised by the new way things are being done. Not so. I was dare-I-say kinda shocked to learn recently about a new-ish potty-training approach. You might be surprised too.

It’s called the OH CRAP method. All credit belongs to the author of the book, “Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right” by – get this – Jamie Glowacki, the self-proclaimed Pied Piper of Poop. Her two former careers were as a social worker and…circus performer!

As my son and daughter-in-law start to think about how they are going to handle this stage in GrandGirl #1’s life, they shared information about this book and the method it espouses.  The book was actually published in 2015 and promises to give parents the tools to train their kids to pee and poop independently AND in a potentially short window of time.

According to the explanation, this isn’t theory, you’re not bribing with candy and there are no gimmicks. Instead, she reframes the task with some terminology - it’s not potty “training,” it’s potty “learning.” I like that.

She starts by debunking the notion of “waiting til they're ready.” She perceives a developmental window of opportunity between 20-30 months which plays on appropriate levels of self-awareness.

Here’s the breakdown…it begins with the understanding of the four stages of a child’s awareness concerning the process: clueless, I peed, I’m peeing and I have to go pee. Poop comes next.

It all begins with picking a start date and clearing your calendar for the next three days. If you’ve got plans, cancel them or pick a different start date.

Then you take off the diaper and let the child spend the day naked! A shirt is optional though. This creates some stark awareness for everybody. There can be prompting or not. The next stage is wearing clothes but no diaper or underpants (since they still feel like a diaper). Again, prompting is optional.

Naps and overnights are permissible times for a diaper initially.

“Accidents” are considered “learning tools” at the beginning.

Pull ups are banned – they’re too much like diapers.

Children are guided to help clean up the pee and poop that didn’t make it into the potty.

What’s nice about this method is that it doesn’t come with an exact timing. Success is defined by progress, not by time that has passed. Each child is different.

The areas where parents most often mess things up: rushing or not prompting when it would be wise or prompting too much. Other problems: waiting too long to start or being too casual about it.

That being said, she does place troublesome training situations into four categories, the last one being “the child from hell.” Yikes!

The skill lies with catching signals that some pee or poop is imminent.

Prompting does not mean begging, cajoling or negotiating.

Around week three, the tides should be shifting. Underpants, self-initiation, night and naptime dryness can all converge.

The book does a great job of covering all kinds of other details like…Wiping! Regression! And what to do when the child wants to pee at the exact same time you sit down to pee!

The book professes that all of this can be done faster than you expect. And whatever the challenges are, they’re all temporary.

But no matter what happens, it’s clear that copious cycles of laundry and professional carpet cleaning need to be a central part the plan too.

It’s certainly a heavy load!!