Potty training twins, just like other aspects of raising multiples, is an adventure.

If you are parenting twins, you’ve already learned that patience, flexibility and humor are your best friends.

These same qualities will serve you well when it comes to potty training your twins. Apply them to the following basic toilet training steps and you’ll see success more quickly than not.

1. Who’s ready when?

Potty training readiness is vital before toilet training any child. It’s counterproductive to attempt potty training just because you, as the parent, want your child out of diapers.

Children potty train when they’re ready. Period. Double this truth if you’re parenting twins.

You will have to be ready to go with the flow here. If both twins show readiness cues at the same time, that’s great. But quite often that is not the case and you’ll find yourself needing to toilet train one at at time.

This may involve setting up a time when the not-yet-ready twin goes to Grandma’s for a couple of days while you are training his brother or sister.

If that’s not possible, perhaps someone can come in and focus on the not-training twin while you focus on the trainee.

The challenge here is that the not-ready twin will distract the ready twin from his business. Leaving you with a lot of frustration.

So determining readiness will enable you to know what you’re going to need to set up in terms of both twins’ schedules to make potty training as smooth as possible.

2. Personality counts.

Personality will really come into play while potty training twins. Do you have cooperative guys? Strong-willed gals? One compliant and the other simply – busy?

When planning your potty training adventure, do more than simply keep your twins personalities in mind.

Actually plan your training methods to directly address those personalities.

A strong-willed twin is going to need to believe that potty training is his idea. It’s your job to convince him of that.

A compliant twin is going to need to be clear about the exact steps you expect out of her and those steps need to appear to be quite easy and short.

One size does not fit all in this scenario.

3. Fully prepared.

To make potty training your twins go as smoothly as possible, think ahead a bit about the types of resources you may need.

Potty chairs (you’ll need at least two), toddler underwear, easy on/off clothes and a ton of wipes start the list.

Depending upon the personalities of your twin toddlers, you may decide to utilize potty training dolls or stuffed animals, prizes or rewards and toilet training books. You’ll want to consider if your children will respond to any additional types of motivation through the use of potty watches or training dvds.

Some of these resources you’ll want to gather ahead of time before training your twins even begins. But other resources you can just take notes on and put together only what you actually need later on in the training.

The point here is, by being fully prepared and thinking ahead, you’ll have less need to throw up your hands in frustration at any given moment. Instead, you can easily move on to the next training concept seamlessly.

Less frustration for you and less chance of a power struggle between you and your twins.

So remember, when potty training twins, double check for readiness signs, consider their unique personalities when designing a training structure and plan for needed resources ahead of time.

After all, potty training your twins is only the first of many such adventures you’ll share with them as they grow.

Author Bio: Colleen Langenfeld has potty trained four kids and helps other moms get more out of their mothering at http://www.paintedgold.com . Toilet train faster using her potty reward charts and creative ideas plus uncover more about potty training twins by visiting her website today.

Category: Parenting
Keywords: potty training twins,potty training,training twins,toilet training