00:12:40.980This is a side gripe, but I find so much parenting advice works great for your first or only child.
00:12:49.140And then when you start adding more siblings into the mix, it's like these other authors haven't even considered that there might be other kids around.
00:12:57.820Like, there's no world where you or I could not have the little potty around when babies were around, right?
00:13:04.320It's just like, well, one kid is using the little potty.
00:13:07.060My older son used the little potty for so long, you know?
00:16:48.000and we're not going to be teaching you know what we call it is upskilling we're not going to be
00:16:54.320upskilling every step of the ups every day because none of us have time for that right
00:17:00.500so what you're going to do is you know one day you're going to be like hey let's change your
00:17:06.500diaper in the bathroom right like so instead of just changing your diaper on the changing table
00:17:10.680or in the middle of the living room or whatever you normally do be like you know today we're going
00:17:14.960to go we're gonna go change your diaper in the bathroom and maybe if you had a poop we're gonna
00:17:18.900like drop it in the potty and flush which i don't know if you know this apparently that's what we've
00:17:23.780been told to do all along do you know that we were supposed to be flushing our kids poop all this
00:17:28.720time um no no i did not i've had i did not three children and i you know what it makes so much
00:17:41.160sense so much sense in fact i will i will reveal to our listeners that we just had to have a pause
00:17:48.220on on the podcast because the baby was fast asleep downstairs and nick went to go pick the other kids
00:17:55.300up from school and she woke up screaming bloody murder because she wanted to get up to poop in
00:18:02.040the potty she had a diaper on but we didn't make it in time and i just put i just put a massive
00:18:09.600poop in the trash because i literally never thought of this until right now and sorry earth
00:18:16.580i trust me i had two kids and never knew this either and do feel bad about it but you know
00:18:24.100i don't think we need to lose too much sleep over it because we're all very busy and the last thing
00:18:28.420you need to be shamed about is the fact that you don't have time to like carefully roll
00:18:32.580your child's poop i mean and a lot of my kids poops are not rollable right like you carefully
00:18:37.280put them into the toilet and flush it no one's got tired of them but when you're doing this
00:18:40.940rehearsal period that's a great time to start if you haven't been doing it already because you get
00:18:45.780to practice what it sounds like when a poop like flops in the potty right you get to practice
00:18:50.000flushing kids that does not take a lot of effort toddlers love flushing like that is the number
00:18:55.940one thing they want to do in body training in my experience um but so the point is that you
00:19:01.960start sprinkling in this teaching and not in a like over the top super didactic way just
00:19:10.000making it part of your life so that after these two weeks or three weeks or however long you
00:19:16.140are practicing when it comes time to be like okay we are going to remove the diapers and start
00:19:24.240actually peeing in the potty. The only thing that's brand new for them to learn is noticing
00:19:33.620the sensation that they have to go and like getting it into the potty. So our goal is that
00:19:40.540we're not just one day springing it on them saying, okay, time to take away diapers, which
00:19:46.040might be really emotionally hard for them. And you have to learn all these nine steps at once.
00:19:52.180and also pay attention to how your body feels like all of that stuff can be so overwhelming
00:19:57.720for you know anyone i mean i've talked to a lot of adults especially adults who are
00:20:03.820neurodivergent have adhd it's hard for them to notice the sensation to go right because we're
00:20:09.260so busy doing other things toddlers they're so busy they're running around playing having such
00:20:14.560a great time getting them to just notice the sensation that they have to go is the job of
00:20:20.180potty training and so if we can isolate that and make it not a big deal that oh we're also getting
00:20:27.000rid of diapers oh we're also like going to a different place to go potty oh we're also you
00:20:31.900know having to pull our pants up and down like all those extra little steps that to us as adults
00:20:36.340don't seem like a big deal because there's like background noise to them are all big steps they've
00:20:41.320had to learn so as long as we can like preload that learning then when it comes time to taking
00:20:45.780weight diapers. They're solely focused on the internal sensation awareness. Yeah, I like that
00:20:52.340a lot. And because I do have to say, I never thought about the sensation of going potty until
00:20:59.380I started potty training and then forgot it promptly until I did it again. And then until
00:21:05.680I did it again. And now it's I think about it all the time. Yeah. I'm like, what does that feel like?
00:21:12.420how do you even convey that weird feeling into words? Why don't we have a word in this language
00:21:19.360for this sensation? I wonder if any languages have a word for the sensation,
00:21:25.100the different sensation when you have to pee or the sensation when you have to poop.
00:21:28.860That's a really good question. I wish I knew the answer to that because that's something we
00:21:32.860really struggled with writing the book. We kept saying like, oh, notice the sensation,
00:21:37.800Like the pressure, the tickle, we really had a hard time articulating what it feels like because I suspect like almost everything, it feels a little different for everyone else, you know, like for everyone as like a slightly different way of their, you know, we call it interoception, right?
00:21:57.420a feeling that we feel inside of our body our interoception isn't oh is it universal so for
00:22:03.820one person it might feel like pressure for another it might feel like a tickle and it's one of those
00:22:09.100things that we really struggled with and it's gonna have to be something that you talk about
00:22:14.140with your kid right but it it is ineffable it is it is you just know like but you have to
00:22:23.420you have to connect those dots and that's that's the job of potty training right like we're trying
00:22:28.800to get our precious little beings to connect that feeling that's that defies description
00:22:36.920to oh we got to go to the potty and it takes practice and repetition and it's not always
00:22:44.300going to happen a hundred percent of the time and one of the things that we really hammer in
00:22:50.720in this book is that there is no binary of not potty trained and potty trained it's not a light
00:22:59.280switch it's not you either are or you aren't it is a process that we are trying to make as easy
00:23:07.580as possible and try to make the parental involvement the high parental involvement
00:23:11.400phase as short as possible but like we all know that kids don't just like kids when they're
00:23:20.260learning anything new they don't just do it one day it's like we all think oh when does a kid take
00:23:24.280their first steps it's like okay there might be that first step but a toddler first crawls they
00:23:29.860well not all of them they then they they cruise and then you know their first steps like what is
00:23:35.240the first steps is it that first step that they fall right after is it the first three steps
00:23:39.920consecutive is it the first five there's no there's no definition of it right we we just say
00:23:45.440you know a kid is learning to walk and then one day they're they're running all over the house
00:23:49.000potty training I don't know why we think of it any differently and parents get so hung up on this
00:23:55.120idea that they potty trained quote unquote on the three-day weekend they had some success and then
00:24:01.720life happens and the kids end up you know having misses or they end up having to go back into
00:24:08.140diapers for a little bit because it was just too too hard and people get so hung up on it people
00:24:16.320like like they failed and they get so much shame about it and it's like it's not it's if you can
00:24:21.200stop thinking about it as a binary as a light switch you either are you aren't and think you
00:24:25.420think of it as more processed then you don't have to worry so much about this shame and guilt and
00:24:31.660just keep building keep scaffolding right like keep getting them to that end goal which is that
00:24:38.480one day when they're a teenager you won't know the last time they went to the bathroom right
00:24:43.280it's a long game. You know what? I would love to know. Actually, I would love to not know
00:24:50.720when my kids have gone to the bathroom, but they still tell me. Granted, they're not teenagers,
00:24:57.000but everyone in this house pretty much still informs me when they're going to the bathroom.
00:25:02.340And it is knowledge that I'm so psyched to no longer have. I'm really, I'm just excited to
00:25:07.540have that mental space back. I truly am. It will happen one day. Yeah. But unfortunately,
00:25:12.220probably not for a while joe okay let's take one more break and when we get back let's go into
00:25:18.900into the active phase the active phase of potty training i will tell you i love the idea that
00:25:23.520this is not a binary because i do think that for so long it's either one or the other you're potty
00:25:29.260trained or you're not are they potty trained are they potty trained well and the problem is i do
00:25:32.960think a lot of daycares make it a binary as well right and so that and that makes this tricky but
00:25:58.540Well, I think there's a lot of methods for potty training a kid.
00:26:02.720I have to tell you that I think social media is one of the worst things to ever happen
00:26:07.380to potty training? Because there are so many people, I mean, I say this in every episode,
00:26:13.000right? I mean, there's so many people who want to tell you how to do it. And I think there's
00:26:18.320actually too much information out there. Have you noticed that? Oh, absolutely. When we started
00:26:24.540writing this book, we, you know, did our comps research, looking what books are out there,
00:26:29.080looking what other methods. Right now, there actually hasn't been a really popular potty
00:26:34.140book in many years oh crap came out i think nine years ago at this point and now it's kind of
00:26:40.940merged into a lot of these online influencers having potty training either courses or um just
00:26:48.380like handouts right i mean miss rachel has like a potty training special right now uh dr becky0.98
00:26:56.180has that's like i think how she lures people into her uh good inside membership is she has like a1.00
00:27:01.900like she gives away the potty training thing for free big little feelings has a potty chain thing0.65
00:27:06.680and i'm not saying anything positive or negative about any of those i mean i i think that there's
00:27:11.880room for a lot of information out there but there is so much information and a lot of it is repeated
00:27:17.880information and that's why we really wanted to write this book because we wanted there to be
00:27:22.980something concrete that parents could just hold and flip through and like have a reference because
00:27:30.600like we had said you know before the break it's not a binary this is something that you're going
00:27:36.640to be dealing with for a while and even once your kid is like solidly out of the diapers
00:27:42.660there's still challenges that that show up and we have like a whole troubleshooting
00:27:47.720chapter in the book for challenges that come up after the initial potty training phase because
00:27:53.500you know with the gun shit happens and you need to be able to reference back and see like okay
00:28:00.900how do we take a pause like what if my kid does need to go back into diapers for a little bit0.99
00:28:05.100what happens if they are just like fearful of the potty or what happens uh when it's time for them
00:28:11.160to go to their first sleepover and they are still wearing pull-ups at night that kind of long-term
00:28:17.040stuff that we address in the book we wanted that to be available to people and not have to like
00:28:21.920scrub through a online course to try to find where we had mentioned it once or uh you know
00:28:30.020look through a pamphlet or whatever right we want that's that was our goal for writing the book
00:28:33.800um but i agree that we just you know i'm now deep into you know potty training talk and
00:28:40.400my instagram is full of potty training content because they've got me pegged after doing all
00:28:45.320this research and every comment section is just full of the n of one examples and what i mean by
00:28:59.420that is the people who have one kid or two kids or whatever and they say well for my daughter i just
00:29:06.260put out the potty and she got it right away i didn't need any of this stuff right or the person
00:29:11.200who's like, I tried everything and my son never took to any of it, whatever it is. There's always
00:29:16.360these stories. And then there's these influencers and just regular parents who are posting about
00:29:22.380what worked for them. And the problem is, as we all know, what works for one person doesn't work
00:29:28.800for another. And we get so blinded by like, well, this worked great for me. Why wouldn't it work
00:29:35.800for you that it gets very disheartening. Like you see someone post like, well, I just told my
00:29:42.840daughters we were done with diapers and we put the little potty out. And the next day she was
00:29:47.880a hundred percent trained day and night. And like someone who's in the trenches with a neurodivergent
00:29:53.200kid who is resisting all direct teaching and who, you know, is not interested at all in using the
00:30:00.800potty is going to see that and feel like terrible about themselves right it's awful also i gotta
00:30:06.960tell you i think that person's lying i just there's also that i mean look it ha it totally
00:30:12.200happens for some kids especially second and third kids who see the bigs use the potty all the time
00:30:18.320right but like so many of those people i think are dirty liars and they just want someone to
00:30:24.240applaud for them and like okay fine you get a medal all right again but also if your kid did0.96
00:30:29.640Yay. Yay for you. That's awesome. I do think a lot of that, especially when people are posting it. I'm talking about the potty training, you know, here on the podcast in very vague terms. It freaks me out when people post pictures of their kids on the potty. And I think a lot of it is used to just like juice the algorithm.
00:30:57.340um yes that is unfortunate we had a you know I built our website I'm a my day job is I'm a web
00:31:05.260developer and so I was like I'm gonna build a fancy website for the book and I really struggled
00:31:10.720because I wanted to put something that you know telegraphed that we were a potty training book
00:31:17.340on the website which would mean a kid sitting on a potty and I went to like stock photos looking
00:31:22.580for it and it just made me deeply uncomfortable I ended up finding a picture where the kid was
00:31:28.680like basically clothed and it was just like smiling on a potty and it wasn't at all like
00:31:33.720demonstrative of anything um because I was just like this is so common like I've seen I've seen
00:31:41.580so many people so many strangers kids like bear butted on the potty on social media uh that it
00:31:50.220it definitely gives me pause and also like i think we need to remember that this is like a sensitive
00:31:56.020learning time for our kids like we are not here to exploit them uh for either the the wins right
00:32:06.220like i'm such a good mom i i got them potty trained right away like we're trying to prop
00:32:12.020ourselves off up with this thing that they did but honestly potty training is one of the first
00:32:17.940opportunities our kids have to demonstrate like their learning style how how they learn with you
00:32:26.200like how they react to direct teaching and uh sometimes that can shine a light on
00:32:34.320how the parents are interacting with kids and i think that if you are doing that or you're like
00:32:39.900bragging about how they're they're learning and posting all these pictures of them on the potty
00:32:45.240and stuff, it tells me a little bit more about you than it does about them or about how you
00:32:49.360actually did potty training. Does that make sense? It makes so much sense. It does. I also think that
00:32:54.660a lot of parents make potty training about them. I got to say, they're like, oh, well,
00:33:00.280our schedule's cleared for the next two weeks because we're potty training. And I'm like,
00:33:05.600okay, I get it. But the way you describe it as it's not a binary, maybe you don't have to
00:33:12.840completely clear your schedule like maybe you throw on a diaper so you can go make that play
00:33:18.400date outside 100 i we explicitly recommend that in the book because what we realized especially
00:33:27.520gia like working with so many parents is that this thing i was griping about earlier where like
00:33:31.720a lot of parenting advice is great when you have one kid but then when you have siblings everything
00:33:37.220gets thrown out the window it's the exact same for these like stay home for three days method
00:33:42.080when you have another kid in the house it's nearly impossible to do that right but when you have one
00:33:48.220kid it's nearly impossible to stay home all you know for three days life gets in the way people
00:33:52.180have to work people have to like go pick up medicine at the pharmacy right life happens and
00:33:57.280to be so judgmental and holier than thou to be like but you have to clear your entire schedule
00:34:02.340is you know a pretty privileged stance so we say like look is it better it does it set you up for
00:34:08.700more success if you can mostly stay home those first few days yeah of course because you just
00:34:13.080need you know the time between when your kid notices they have to go potty and when they
00:34:17.360actually make it to the potty that that lead time at the very beginning is minuscule right like at
00:34:24.480the first day it's non-existent then it gets longer and longer as they start to understand
00:34:30.100how the sensation connects with what they need to do and obviously if you're home and standing
00:34:34.960right next to the small potty, you're going to have more opportunity for success. However,
00:34:40.200life happens. And if you need to throw on a diaper, again, these kids are smart. They're
00:34:44.040going to know, especially if you talk to them about it, what's going on. They're going to know
00:34:49.200that, you know, well, we've got to go pick up your brother from soccer practice, you know, so
00:34:53.860because we don't want you to feel anxious about needing to go potty in the car, we're going to
00:35:00.080use a car diaper or whatever you want to call it. So absolutely being flexible in that way is good.
00:35:06.660And again, you're not going to somehow magically ruin all the learning they've already done
00:35:12.480by taking a trip in the car with a diaper. Totally, totally. I mean, I think that that
00:35:17.520is something that came across in a lot of the teachings that I read when I did this for the
00:35:22.140first time eight years ago. It was that, you know, there was no going back. You're screwed.
00:35:27.080You will erase everything, all of your progress. And I mean, what I've learned in Three Kids is1.00
00:35:34.040that none of that is true. I mean, everything is just building on everything all of the time. I
00:35:39.560mean, my best advice for any parents about anything is there's no right and wrong way.
00:35:44.220You read whatever things you can get your hands on and you take what works for you.
00:35:49.060Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of part of the reason we give a lot of options. I mean,
00:35:55.600our book is 220 something pages long which seems insane when I say it out loud that we were able
00:36:01.480to write that much on potty treating and then we still now that it's you know it's in its final
00:36:05.760proof stage we can't add anything but she and I keep being like oh we forgot to add this we forgot
00:36:09.680we have so much more we could have put in because we we were trying to capture as many options and
00:36:17.160like resources that we could give parents right we were trying to sort of a choose your own adventure
00:36:22.660of if you have this situation in your life, here's how you might be able to handle it. Or if you have
00:36:28.560this other situation, here's how you can handle it. So it's one of those things where we would
00:36:35.460be thrilled if you took what was useful to you in our book and then did it your own way. Absolutely
00:36:42.380thrilled. We do not have any judgment about that at all. I love that. I love that. Will you tell
00:36:47.620everyone where they can pre-order your book and where they can find more of you on the interwebs?
00:36:53.380Oh, absolutely. Okay. So the book is called Good to Go, A Fresh Take on Potty Training for Today's
00:36:58.480Intentional Parent. And it's out October 2nd, 2025 from Bloomsbury. You can pre-order it on
00:37:05.440all of the usual channels. You can also go to goodtogoparenting.com and I have all of the
00:37:10.840pre-order links right there for you. I'm also the co-host of the Big Cat Positive Pregnancy
00:37:17.500and Parenting Journey podcast. I've been hosting that show for seven years now, weekly. We are a
00:37:25.040show that followed our pregnancies. My co-host and I had pregnancies all the way through and then
00:37:29.340talked about parenting. And it's a fun and informative show. And you can find us on all
00:37:34.320of your podcasting platforms or big positive podcast.com amazing thank you so much for being
00:37:41.120here today thank you for having me joe it was so nice to talk to you um also i finished your most
00:37:46.660recent book last night and i loved it and i wish i could start it well i mean i guess i could but
00:37:50.920i wish i could start it all over again for the first time because the twists and the turns were
00:37:54.700amazing oh i never get i never get sick of hearing that in fact i'm just not going to edit that out
00:38:00.500because, you know. No, you shouldn't. No, no, no. Thank you. Thank you for the advertising.
00:38:04.700I appreciate it. And you? I loved it. I loved it.