Potty Training: What Do You Wish You'd Known?

Potty training can be as maddening as it is exciting. On the one hand, saying goodbye to diapers and watching your little one turn into a big kid is thrilling, but on the other hand, the learning period can be a long, messy process of trial and error.

Here, real parents share the one thing they wish they’d known before they began the toilet transition:

Me? I wish someone would have patiently, repeatedly told me that my child will get it. That there’s no real deadline despite what the books say, and that Potty training is often a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of thing. A mess isn’t a failure or a disappointment, and in fact it should be an expected part of the process. Arm yourself with Pampers Easy Ups as a sanity saver as you navigate the potty-training process. The holiday road trips leaving you stuck in traffic or shopping trips to grab some groceries will be a lot less stressful when you utilize this valuable tool.

And finally, that potty training kids are kind of adorable. Just recently I showed my now 11-year-old a little video of himself, I believe at age 2, completely matter-of-factly explaining, “I pooped on the floor.” While munching on a carrot and pointing to the spot his tiny voice says, “Right there. And then you had to clean it up.”

“Oops?” my voice asks in the clip, and he simply shrugs his shoulders with a big smile on his face and not a single hint of embarrassment.

I won’t go so far as to show the video to any of my son’s peers, but I probably will hold onto it long enough to send it his way when someday, an extremely long time from now, he’s up to his elbows in diapers and trying to potty train his own tot.