When your toddler approaches potty training age, it is natural to get both excited and apprehensive.

Being done with diapers sounds like a wonderful thing!

But you’ve heard all the toilet training horror stories and frankly, you’re worried.

You realize you don’t even know where to begin. Should you take your child out of diapers and use underwear exclusively? Somehow, that looks like a mess waiting to happen.

What to do?

First of all, relax.

Underwear potty training is not as hard as it may seem, especially if you get armed with a little information first.

Think about it this way. When you are confident of the next steps to take, your toddler will take her cues from you and relax, too. So let’s explore making the transition from diapers to toddler underwear.

– Make sure he’s ready.

Don’t mess around with this one. Don’t start toilet training until you are sure your child is showing regular, consistent potty training readiness cues. You cannot push, talk, or bribe your child into training.

If you’ve already started training, even though you realize now your toddler wasn’t ready, don’t panic. This just means your child is going to take longer to train. She will still get there. I promise!

– Making the switch.

Once you’re confident your child is ready to begin training (see the author’s resource box at the end of this article for a link to a readiness log you can print out and use to determine your child’s potty readiness) you need to make a decision or two. Here’s what you are considering.

Do you want to use training pants or toddler underwear? Also, do you want to use cloth or disposables?

Toddler training pants are thick, cushy pants that will allow your toddler to feel wet or soiled when he has an accident, but will hold most of the mess.

Toddler underwear is thinner (more like adult underwear) and easier for your child to get up and down at potty time, but will not hold accidents. At all.

You can put plastic pants over both of these options to help hold accidents. Still, messes will occur. Some of the toddler training pants come with waterproof outer layers. These options are washable, obviously.

Going the disposable route is different. It sounds convenient – less mess – and that’s true. But just like it is more convenient – and like a diaper to you – so it will be to your toddler, too. Most kids can’t tell the difference between disposable toddler pants and diapers. So they use both like diapers.

This can seriously delay potty training for your child.

When training my four kids, I had the best luck with transitioning to thick toddler training pants while the initial training was going on. My children were very excited to be wearing big boy/big girl underwear and they still got the message clearly when they had an accident.

After they got the hang of things and there weren’t many accidents, I introduced an even more grown up underwear; regular toddler undies. My kids thought this was simply the next step in growing up and as thus, another exciting milestone.

Did we have accidents? Absolutely. Did you learn to ride a bike without falling down or overnight? Probably not. Potty training is messy and inconvenient; that’s part of what challenges your child to accomplish it and get to the underwear stage which will be more convenient and less messy for HIM.

Remember, lots about parenting will be messy and inconvenient. Letting your child know now, at this stage, that you know best and need to be listened to, will go a long ways towards helping you both as your child grows.

Underwear potty training is only the first of many challenges you will tackle together. Relax and enjoy the ride!

Author Bio: Colleen Langenfeld has potty trained four kids and offers you a free potty readiness log. Toilet train faster using her potty reward charts and creative ideas plus uncover more about underwear potty training by visiting her website now.

Category: Parenting
Keywords: underwear potty training,potty training,toddler underwear,toddler training pants,training pants