Well, we did it. Potty trained two boys at the same time. We’ve been completely potty trained for almost two months now, night time included, and have had a minimum of accidents.
I started thinking about resurrecting my Twinland posts awhile ago, and this subject immediately popped into my head. You may have remembered I blogged about potty training and how we were nearing readiness. That blog was 14 months ago.
Here’s how it all went down. The twins started showing significant readiness in February last year. Last summer, I started potty training them. I read the three day potty training method and tried it. Yeah, totally didn’t work for us and was mostly just frustrating as heck. What I discovered is that they would go in the potty, but if I didn’t set a 30 minute timer and force them to sit, we’d have accidents.
Diapers I was fine with. Accidents, not so much. I knew that the worst thing I could do for potty training was make it a stressful experience, so I backed off. It didn’t help that we were building a house and spending the majority of our weekends in the car, making the lengthy drive back and forth to check on it.
Preschool started. The twins were still in diapers, and I felt a little chagrined. They had just turned three by that point, and I felt like I sucked as a mom or something since my kids were perfectly content in diapers. If they woke up and asked for underwear, I’d let them wear it until they had an accident or a nap, but otherwise I didn’t have the time or energy.
If you’re a twin mom and you’re there, don’t feel guilty. Until someone has had two kids in the exact same stage of life, they have no idea what it’s like.
“I’ll potty train after we move,” I thought. But by the time we moved, it was two weeks before Thanksgiving. And we were going back and forth as much as we had been while building, except this time it was to Christmas parties and family events. After New Year’s, I said, “We’ll potty train before Disneyland.” But that was only a month away, and diapers seemed way easier for the theme park than running to the restroom every two seconds with a child.
We’d been telling the children for awhile by then we couldn’t go to Disneyland until they were potty trained. I slowly amended it to, “If we go to Disneyland, you have to be potty trained when we get home.”
I felt like the world’s worst kind of liar for switching it on them, and lamented to my husband they’d never believe a word I said again. So much for consistency and following through and all that crap. We hadn’t done any of it when it came to potty training.
So we went to Disneyland and had a fabulous time. We got home on a Sunday, and I gave us a few days to settle back into life and play catch-up on things like laundry and emails. But by the weekend, I was determined. They were officially 3 1/2, and they would be potty trained.
I told the boys for those four or so days from when we got home until we started potty training that it was coming. I reminded them frequently that they were big boys now, and we would be throwing away the diapers and only wearing underwear. I reminded them that we’d let them go to Disneyland, and now they needed to do this.
Then I took the diapers away. A few times they whined and complained and wanted them back. But I held firm. I hid every last diaper, and only allowed pull-ups at bed time (not even naps).
I didn’t remind them to go potty, but let them tell me (unless it had been a few hours since we’d gone). We had a few accidents, and then that was that. They were potty trained. A few days later, their pullups were staying completely dry at night. I took those away too. And it was that easy to potty train my twin boys.
Here’s my advice to all you twin moms out there…just wait. If it’s stressful, stop. Life is hard enough with multiples without adding that to the list. 🙂 I’m sure that it isn’t this easy for all kids. Some struggle with bed wetting, defiance, or a number of other issues. But for us, it was that easy. The reason it didn’t work a year ago was because they still weren’t mature enough to grasp the concept, even if they could execute the action when I sat them on the potty. And now we don’t buy diapers, and they wear underwear, and they rarely have accidents. It’s wonderful!