Toilet training: Can somebody else do it for me, please?

Rachel Corbett: 00:00:02

Hello, welcome to the show. Today's question comes from Tess, who has asked, do you have any tips about toilet training? I am just about to start and I'm terrified.

I can tell you what my tip about toilet training would be. Don't ask me for any tips because I am also terrified. And I am so glad that you said you were terrified.

There has not really been anything apart from the sleep stuff that has caused me anxiety in terms of doing it by myself.

That the thing around sleep, I was conscious that, like, it was really lonely those nights that I was up on that bouncing ball at like, you know, 2:00am, 4:00am, whatever. So I was pretty clear, I don't want to do this by myself. Which is why I was big on the sleep training stuff so that I could get sleep overnight.

But everything that I kind of moved through in that sleep phase, I always kind of either needed my best mate or I had a night midwife.

I used to get them over to help me go from stage to stage, like taking their arms out of the swaddle, all the stuff that I felt would disrupt the night routine. I was really scared to do that on my own because sleep was such a big thing to me and those night hours were so lonely.

So I really wanted to have somebody here to do that. The only other thing that I have been a little scared about on my own is toilet training. And I don't know why I. I don't think it's. It's not.

Certainly not the idea of her going to the toilet, because she started to do that and she's a pretty smart kid, she comes to things in her own time. So everybody was saying to me, she's two, you can start to do it. I'm like, I actually don't want push it on her. I want her to get curious about it.

So she would start to ask me to sit on the toilet and I would say to her, do you want me to take your pants down? She's like, no, no, just sit on the toilet. And then I was like, okay, you tell me when you're done.

And she would literally sit on the toilet and go, I'm done. So I was like, okay, you don't quite get what this is yet, but I'll keep on doing this until you move on to the next phase.

And then you sort of understand it. I also didn't get her a potty because she's just not that type of kid.

She's the type of kid that she's like, if I put a potty down she'd be like, why I want to sit on the big toilet? She got no in that kind of stuff or she, she wanted to keep sitting on the big toilet.

So I just got her a ladder and a little seat for the big toilet.

And sure enough, you know, one day I go and pick her up at school and she's asked for them to put her on the toilet and she's done away on the toilet and then so we get the ladder and the, the seat at home and now over night time, before we go to bed, she'll always want to go and do the go to the toilet. Sometimes she goes to the toilet, sometimes she doesn't. The very first time I put her on the toilet, she did a poo. Pardon the too much information.

But I was like, oh, I thought, I thought that was going to be the hardest thing for us to get going. But she kind of did it and then, you know, sometimes she bores of it, she doesn't whatever.

But since this has started, everybody tells me I could do the three days of toilet training where you just like nappies off at home and you just push through and then next thing you know, at the end of three days they're toilet trained. Help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus. I do not want to do this on my own.

My hairdresser actually has a bunch of grandkids and she does it with all of her grandkids and they, she takes it up to them, up to her holiday house and they stay there for three days. And I was like, could you take mine?

Because all I want somebody to say is, I'll take Olivia and do that for three days and I'll bring her back toilet trained. I just don't want to go through the mess, the faf, the convincing, the three full days.

I know in the grand scheme of things it's only three days and I know sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean that, that after that they're toilet trained and that's the end of it. But the idea of actually doing those three days by myself, for some reason I'm just so overwhelmed by it.

So I am just at the moment letting her go on the loo. She's doing ways in the toilet at daycare. She won't wear the pull ups. She's got absolutely no interest in them. I'm calling the mundies all day long.

But she like was really interested in them for five minutes, but then was like, no, I've got absolutely no interest in this. She just wants normal nappies. She tells me so I can't get her into those pull ups.

So that's also frustrating because it's not like I could pull her pants down and pull them back up again. I got to pick her up, put her happy back on. Just like, oh, can't we just fast track this bit?

You forget because for certain periods they just get better at the things that they already know how to do. And then you come to something else and you're like, oh, that's right, you have to teach them everything. Everything.

I feel like I'm sure there's heaps that I've taught her in between now and then. But the last really big thing feels like eating. You know that you were like, this is how you eat.

And then you gotta watch them sit there and gag until like, until they've kind of got a handle of it. This feels like the first thing since that period. And that was like what, four months? So it was like two years, almost two years ago.

So now you're just like, oh God. This process of actually or sleeping I suppose was another thing, I guess. But again, that was years ago. Years ago.

So, yeah, I don't have any tips for you, which is completely wasted your time. But I would just like to encourage you to understand that I also feel the same way. I'm terrified. I don't know. I'm sure once it's done it'll be fine.

It's like with anything, right? Anything that I've been truly terrified about, like I mentioned earlier, getting the arms out of the swaddle, you know, that night, nothing happened.

Nothing happened. She fell asleep. It was absolutely not problematic. It was a total anti climax.

And like with most things, you work yourself into a mad frenzy and then you realize, oh, it's totally fine.

So I'm sure it will be like this for this, but for the moment I'm just terrified and maybe I should just rip the band aid off and do it and get over it instead of worrying about it all the time. I don't know why this in particular is something that concerns me. I don't have the kind of house that you can shit all over. I don't.

I've been wanting to buy one of those Bissell spot cleaners. It's probably time to do that. But like there's only a certain area that is floorboards.

And that in the past has been where I've stood when she's been sick and she's needed to vomit. She had to vomit one night and she looked at me, she reached out to cuddle me. And I was like, oh, we're going to vomit. So what did I do?

Because I actually don't have a bucket, which I should remember to buy. But I was like, we're going to go and stand in the middle of the kitchen where there is the most, the widest range of splatter available.

And you're just going to spew right down my back and onto the kitchen floor and. Because then Mommy's going to mop it up. But I can't quite do that with poos. And we's, you know, I don't know where they're gonna fire.

They could fire anywhere. And what am I gonna spend the whole three days just being like, we can only play in this square area on the hardwood floor.

Maybe I should read up about this or ask ChatGPT.

Anyway, hopefully in a few episodes I might tell you that the toilet training has done and I might have some more sound advice for you, Tess, but right now, giving you nothing except for solidarity and the very best of luck that you can grit your teeth and get through it. Just like I'm going to grit my teeth and try and get through it as well.

And hopefully I don't have to throw out a rug or a couch or anything else, you know, because once poo gets into things, not a lot you can do about that. Oh, God, what a life we live. Thank you so much for listening and hearing me talk about my perils of toilet training.

Hopefully I'm gonna really try my best to get on.

On top of this, I did tell my hairdresser that I would have this sorted by the time I saw her next, and I'm going to see her next week, and I'm not even close to having it sorted, so there's some more judgment coming my way. Just another day in parent land being judged for not doing something in an appropriate timeline for somebody else. Thank you so much for listening.

If you've got a question, you can always submit it via the link in the description. And I will say, see you next week, hopefully, with a child who can go to the toilet.

But actually, there's no way that's going to happen in a week's time, so forget I even said it.