Getting an early start on potty training

Disclaimer: This post is about potty training, so if you don't want to read about this subject, just skip it!! :)

You know, parenting does not always go exactly like you plan that it will go. I think that before you have kids you sometimes have ideas of how you'll raise them...and then once you actually have kids you usually have to adjust your plans for the real world and your real kids!! :)

Potty training is one of those areas where you usually have ideas of what you'll do ahead of time, but then you just have to see how it goes with your own child.

In Nepal, kids are potty trained early. In recent years, there has been more use of disposable diapers, but using a simple cloth has been a lot more common. So, needless to say, if your baby is just wearing a cloth that leaks all over you and everything else whenever they go potty (no plastic pants, etc.), you start potty training early!!

Anyway, with Rajeev growing up where it is so common for kids to be potty trained by 18 months, it just seemed logical to start early with potty training. We started putting Arya on the potty whenever she woke up when she was about 6 months. I was surprised at how quickly she learned what to do. (I mean it only took a few times.) She didn't start telling me that she had to go potty at this age or anything, and it wasn't like she wouldn't go in her diaper. But by paying attention to when she acted like she had to go to the bathroom, and then taking her, she went through fewer diapers and potty training was a gradual process for her. It wasn't seamless or perfect, but it seemed to work pretty well.

Anyway, we've started the process with Alex now. We were a little late in doing so - he was 7 months instead of 6 like his sister!! (I was just lazy!!) It took him longer to figure it out than Arya...we put him on the potty probably 15 times with no results!! I thought for a while that it might just not work with him, but he seems to be getting the hang of it now though. I just put him on the potty when he wakes up in the morning and he has been going pretty much every morning for a good month now. It is nice because due to his daily routine being what it is, putting him on the potty at this time means one less dirty diaper that I have to change each day!! (Yippee!) I don't really put him on the potty at other times unless I can clearly tell that he needs to go (which I usually can't tell until it is too late!), but I feel like we've gotten a good start on things. I don't worry about rushing it and know he won't be fully trained until he is ready, but for now, this seems like a good way to start.