Jamie Glowacki - Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right

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This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

Copyright 2015 by Jamie Glowacki

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First Touchstone trade paperback edition June 2015

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Interior design by Erich Hobbing

Cover design by Lucy Kim

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Glowacki, Jamie.

Oh crap! potty training / Jamie Glowacki.

pages cm

1. Toilet training.

2. Family & relationshipstoilet training.

3. Family & relationshipsLife stagesInfants & toddlers.

4. Family & relationshipsParentingGeneral. I Title.

HQ770.5 .G57 2015

649'.62 2015013199

ISBN 978-1-5011-2298-9

ISBN 978-1-5011-2299-6 (ebook)

Introduction

W elcome to Oh Crap! Potty Training . This is the definitive guide to potty training. Im Jamie, and I will be your tour guide on this really cool journey. What? Cool journey? Yep, you heard right. The first step I want you to take in beginning potty training is to wrap your head around what a very cool milestone this is. Walking and talking, learning to read and tie shoes and ride bikes are all really cool milestones that we, as parents, look forward to. Potty training, however, fills us with dread, right? It shouldnt. One of the coolest things Ive discovered about potty training is that its your first glimpse into how your child learns. Every child learnsand therefore potty trainsa little differently, and you get great insight into your childs learning methods and curve.

If you dont know my history as a potty trainer, you can check my bio on the website (http://www.jamieglowacki.com). Despite a solid decade of potty training experience, my business exploded when in 2011 when I began to work with lots of people all at the same time, which gave me insight into emerging new trends, new problems, and new parenting methods and styles. I also discovered that there really isnt one method for potty training, because even though theres a necessary component to all successful methodsto potty train, you must take the diapers off the childchildren are different and respond to different approaches. In this book, Im going to teach you the most painless way to get your child out of diapers, but more important, Im going to present the answers to any questions you might have going forward from that point. Bottom line: all kids react differently to not wearing a diaper, and that, my friends, is what everyone fears. Well get into all the nitty-gritty details soon enough. First, though, I need to do some myth busting, and you need to do some mental prep. Then Ill walk you through the first few days of potty training, and finally, well get to all the potential questions you might have.

I used to call this a three-day plan. Theres a reason there are a million three-day potty training methods out there on the internet. It takes roughly three days for the average child to get over the major hump of potty training. But your child is unique, as is your relationship with her. Every child has his own learning curve, andthis is a big and you have an emotional investment in this. One of the reasons I can potty train someone elses child in a day is that I dont have an emotional investment. Its not my child. You and your child have a wonderfully strong bond; this is to both your advantage and your disadvantage. So, yes, some bumps can appear on this road. Over the years, Ive found that some parents get all wrapped up in potty training in three days flat. This creates the very pressure you want to avoid when potty training. If you put pressure on the process, it will collapse.

Ill also throw this in: we all know how very different our children are from one another, and yet somehow the media has led us to think that theres a cookie-cutter version of potty training that will work for every kid. Impossible. How could one way work identically on very different people? Kind of weird when you think of it that way, isnt it?

It will take most kids about three to seven days for the potty training to click. For some kids, the process may be longer, while for others, it will be shorter. You wont know what kind of kid you have until you jump in, but no matter how fast or slow the process is, its all okay and expected. Its the same as learning to read. Some kids pick it up quickly and seemingly intuitively, while others take longer to string letters together into sounds (the latter is more common, btw). Im going to give you markers to track progress , because thats whats important here. This whole thing is about progress, not perfection. What we are going to be doing is bringing your childs awareness from Clueless to I Peed to Im Peeing to I Have to Go Pee. Thats it. Each segment can take roughly a day. Some kids cruise through one component and stall out on another. Again, we wont know until you jump in.

You should notice that nothing here is written in stone as an absolute. We are dealing with little human beings. Their brains arent mature yet, but these little people are very capable of thinking their own thoughts, and they come chock-full of their own personalities. Im passionate about potty training because of the many differences between one child and another, so having said that, you need to keep your childs individual personality in the front of your mind as you go through this process, yes?

On that note, what you are reading is a curriculum. I dont hold the magic keys. You do. I am a potty training expert, but you are the expert on your child. If I say something that doesnt resonate, ditch it. I do my best to back up everything I say with a healthy dose of why , but Im happy to be wrong.

A few quick side notes before we begin. Throughout this book, Ive shared a lot of blog posts Ive written. I highly suggest you subscribe to my blog. I learn new things every day from clients, and I keep my thoughts very up to the minute there. Plus, Ive been told Im funny.

Ive kept the how-to as simple as possible, because some people cruise right through the process with nary a question. The rest of the book is alland I mean all I know about potty training. Its an overwhelming number of what-ifs and how to fix them. This sort of thing may be your idea of fun reading, but I dont recommend overwhelming yourself with potential problems that may never exist for you.