Considering the sheer volume of diapers two babies can soil in a week, it is in everyone’s interest for our boys to get toilet trained sooner rather than later. Even the delivery guy’s life will improve. Every time he drops off our order of diapers via Taobao, we get the stink eye from him. Perhaps we should not order eight cases at a time.
When our daughter hit about 16 months, we decided to let her go without a diaper. After a weekend of endlessly wiping up “accidents”, I suggested we leave the diaper on and try timing her toilet visits instead. After ever nap, meal, snack, or if she just looked funny, we plunked her down on the toilet; even our ayi got behind the program.
The effort caused some strain, especially since she refused to use the portable training potties we purchased, but she quickly got accustomed to going in the toilet rather than her diaper. By 18 months, she was fully house broken and I felt relieved not to be schlepping bags of diapers home from the store (we had not mastered Taobao yet). She was late for being potty trained by traditional Chinese standards, but ahead of the curve for kids in the USA, so we felt good about that.
Now that our twin boys have reached 18 months, we’ve turned our attention to toilet training again. Our goal is to be done with diapers by the end of June when we fly to the USA for a visit to grandma and grandpa’s. To that end, we felt pleasantly surprised when both boys did their business in the loo over the weekend.
I’ll be the first to concede that there is a strong likelihood we will need nighttime diapers beyond June, as every parent I talk with about toilet training tells me boys are different. I’ve still got my hopes up though as they are naturally starting to pee less during the night. Perhaps I will simply need to get accustomed to changing one or more beds until they become masters of their bladders. Whatever the outcome, the day is coming when diapers will no longer be a necessity in our household. Then we can move on to the next toilet challenge – flushing.
Photo courtesy of Todd Morris (Flickr)
