Ah yeah that makes sense. Mine will just pop out of his room if he’s not asleep after a certain amount of time, but when he’s in his room the door is shut. Last night he actually chided me for having the door open a crack when I was still reading books to him. Door must be shut! There are Rules! lol Anyway, it sounds like we both have the same complaint of not wanting to have to creep around our own houses because of small human sensibilities.
No advice to give but from a household that doesn’t flush the toilet during nap time and late at night, I identify so hard with this
I have this same question! My kiddo often is awake chatting quietly or playing with stuffies in his crib. We do not creep around. We have occasionally played with later bed times but he has made it pretty clear that he needs to be in bed with the door closed and light off by 7 or he turns into a monster, even if it means he spends an hour (or sometimes more!) of quiet winding down time before falling asleep.
I am a human who needs a decent wind down too so we are rolling with it.
Our kiddo also sometimes plays through his whole nap and other times takes a 3.5 hour nap. Either way, he is a mess if we try to push the quiet in crib time past 5 hours after waking up.
This isn’t a question. Just a note that I’m freezing in the car on the driveway because my child fell asleep 5 minutes from home
Hmm yes I remember also feeling this way when Duckling dropped his. Out of the blue. Just after 3 years old. I have no help.
Oh yep us too. He sleeps well so we probably don’t need to any more but the habit is ingrained…
We still put our 4.5 year old down for an hour long “rest time” while his sister is sleeping. He doesn’t love it, but I’m not giving up that time alone.
Also, he gets a little crazy if he isn’t by himself for a while every day, even if he’s just jumping off of his bed the whole time.
Toddler E is 16 months old which to me seems too young to try potty training but babysitter thinks it’s time. Babysitter is from Mongolia and she says all kids are trained by 18 months in Mongolia.
We have small potties in all of our bathrooms and she has been very interested in using the toilet lately. She insists on being in the bathroom with me and even tries to watch me pee into the toilet. Today I noticed that every so often she would go into the bathroom and sit on her potty, and then when I would get her out her diaper was wet - did she actually pee sitting there or was it just a coincidence? At one point I took her out of the bathroom, changed her diaper, and then 10 minutes later she was sitting on it again. Sure enough her diaper was wet again!
I feel very unprepared for potty training. I haven’t read or learned anything about it yet - I just randomly got the little potties from buy nothing when they were posted a few months ago and we put them in the bathrooms hoping she would get interested at some point. Should we get her pull ups to wear during the day? Do they even make pull ups small enough for her? She wears size 4 diapers. Is it really too early for us to try to potty training her or am I just being ignorant because dealing with a newborn is hard enough?
When I did my reading about this, my big takeaways were:
Every kid is different
We seem to be trending later and later
Average english age used to be 14 months
Mean techniques can f up your kid forever
Countries with lower income train earlier
The idea of what counts as trained varies wildly… So in countries with earlier training, accidents are relatively common and NBD.
For us, he started showing interest and curiosity at ten and a half months. If he’s in a room with a potty and needs to poop he’ll try and sit on it clothes or hold it and poop.
We are starting to catch the before bath pee in it.
I see it as a process not an event. We’ll probably work harder on it in April, but the same way we practice any skill. If he’s trained at 18 months, amazing. If he’s trained at 4 years, amazing.
Also, for my partner’s generation, training is basically new. They lived in houses backing onto family courtyards and kids used to be encouraged to go in a trench. Little kids all copied each other.
So whatever you do, don’t stress, you are awesome and I’m tired and rambling
You may feel like you’re rambling, but yeah, basically this.
I’m not an expert but I think a big factor is the child’s interest. I don’t see much point in trying to force it (I’m not willing to be mean or shame them). Sometimes all a kid gets to control is what goes into and out of their body (and when) so making elimination a battleground seems unwise.
Also, you have a newborn as well as a toddler? Keep everyone alive and loved, get some sleep, you are doing great. You have a ton on your plate!
I don’t have firsthand experience yet but read that (1) potty training has been creeping later due to how absorbent diapers have gotten and 18 mos is not unusual in countries that use more cloth and (2) if you start earlier it may take longer, but on the whole you’ll be potty trained sooner.
This was in Crib Sheet by the way, written by an economist who dives into research to take a closer look at a lot of new-parent questions and assumptions.
Yes! I read crib sheet what I was pregnant with Toddler E. I forgot there was a section about potty training. I’ll pull it out and go through that chapter again.
Yep, like LadyDuck said you did a good job covering everything. The “process not an event” thing was what past-me didn’t really understand before starting potty training. For us it took a year but we had extenuating circumstances that made it harder/take longer to go from 100% diapers to 100% no accidents for several weeks. And night potty training happened at a different time.
Of course, because I posted here the wiggler went to sleep just fine–like what used to be normal, a few minutes of babbling and then quiet–last night.
D says he didn’t really fight the nap, so he probably napped earlier. No idea why yesterday was a good nap day, of course.
Yeah people definitely talk about it like you spend a weekend and POOF you’re done. Frankly that’s like sleeping through the night too like it happens and then you’re just done. It makes sense that it would be a process, a relapsing and remitting type thing, all the while trending forward. With major jumps back for life transitions and illness and stuff like that.
Random tangent, but you mentioning having to listen to the older kids when they’re prattling on constantly about Minecraft or whatever their interest is when you were a peds nurse has actually helped me when Kiddo is going on and on and ON about whatever’s caught his interest that minute. I just imagine you’re there with me politely nodding and making vaguely interested noises until he runs off to do something else. So thank you for that!
Haha I’m so glad I could help! It just reminds me of that meme “can I literally die from hearing my kid describe a YouTube Minecraft video?” the obsessions can go deep
My kid still goes on and on about cars and Minecraft
Yeah, if I wanted to I’d say our process started around 18 months and “finished” at 3.5 years, but still not dry at night. I’ve no idea how to approach that since he’s asleep, how is he supposed to know to go toilet until his body just starts doing it? (Either waking him up, or him waking up dry in the morning). I have little interest in doing much until we have energy to work on it with him.
My kid went dry at night entirely on his own. He doesn’t wake up to pee, he would just wake up and realize shortly that he Had To Go! and peed in the potty we left in his room (physically climbing up the toilet was a PITA at his size so this was the only thing we kept the potty around for, all other peeing needed to happen in the toilet.) So that was entirely something he did on his own, I made zero effort on that front and eventually we realized he had woken up with a dry diaper for a week straight. I fully support the do nothing approach.
I had heard that some kids still pee at night till they’re around six years old even when everything else is normal, and given some of the physical issues we have going on I was fully prepared to be dealing with night peeing for a long while so I was glad it fixed itself! So few parenting things happen that way! Let me know if I can send night-trained mojo your way or something lol.