5 Potty Training Tips | Pirates of the Potty Theme

Thank you to Pull-Ups for sponsoring today’s post and helping me Potty Train with the Big Kid Academy. As always all opinions are my own.

Potty training can feel overwhelming and daunting! It is one of those unspoken milestones that parents feel they have to reach by a certain age, but truthfully potty training isn’t something that should be rushed. It isn’t an overnight step that your child can do and magically they are potty trained. We do have however have 5 unique potty training tips that should make your life a lot easier!

I learned this with my first. We pushed and pushed Berkley to potty train on her 2^nd Birthday. Pulling out all the stops! Frankly, she wasn’t ready. She couldn’t quite yet tell us ahead of time when she had the “potty feeling” coming on. It left her and I both frustrated, and going potty became a negative thing, where I would beg! We finally decided to let her try Pull-Ups. Where she started to feel like a big girl, but had the protection in case of an accident. Around 2 ½ we tried again! Only this time we followed these simple 5 steps!

We decided to go with a Pirates of the Potty theme since Jake and the Neverland Pirates is a favorite at our house and we found him on the Pull-ups at the store!

Pirates of the Potty: 5 Potty Training Tips for Toddlers

1. Make the bathroom fun.

Make it somewhere you could hang out for a while.  We made the bathroom Neverland Island. It was our hideout from Captain Hook and Mr. Sme! We made some Paper trees, got a treasure box (See step 5) and parked some of our favorite Jake toys in there with us. Making the bathroom fun gives you more opportunities to want to sit on the toilet and when magic happens “YO HO HO!”

2. Have pre-made games.

Sitting on the potty can get boring and kids get restless, have some things they can do to make the time go by faster. Have a ball and play Toilet Paper Bowling, have some crayons and a coloring book!

3. Stick to a routine!

And don’t look back. Choose how often you are going to take your child to the potty and set a timer, this way the child can associate the timer with the feeling of going, once they start getting the feeling the use of the timer can go away. We started with every 30min. We sang a song, and they had to try for 2 minutes! Since we love Jake we changed the song to:
Yo-ho mateys away
There’ll be treasure in the potty today
Heave-ho here we go
Together as a Team.
With Jake and the Neverland pirates
And ME!

4. Never punish for accidents.

Going potty is a learned feeling. You don’t want the child to be afraid of it. Get down on their level and talk to them. Help them understand, and let them pick out the next pull-up and put it on like big girl/boy! A lot of times a child will give a queue that they need to go before the 30min timer is ready, some will squat, others might hide, at that point grab and go! Run to the potty!

5. Reward for Success!

Yo HO HO! We did it! There are many ways to reward! We chose to put a sticker on a sticker chart and for a successful potty! Poops were worth 2! Once you got 5 stickers you got to pick a treasure from the treasure box!  Click here to get our free printable!

You aren’t alone in this mess. Some days I felt like I was potty training a cocker spaniel not a toddler but finally we have been accident free for a year! You can do it too! There are tons more online resources here: 10 Potty Training Hacks.

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