“Oh Crap!” How To Successfully Potty Train Your Toddler

How to potty train your toddler using the “Oh Crap!” Potty Training Method from Jamie Glowacki.

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Parenting comes with so many lovely milestones along with so many crazy ones and potty-training was definitely one of them!

I have a 19 month old daughter, Evelyn. My ambitious self thought it would be a great idea to potty train her at 18 months. Yep! I had no idea what I was setting myself up for. It was one of those crazy milestones! BUT, WE DID IT!

As a first-time mom, I knew nada (nothing) about how to even begin with potty training. After coming across with the book “Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right”, it gave me so much confidence to start our potty training journey and was such a great success.

So, I want to share how I successfully potty trained my 18 month old toddler girl using the “Oh Crap!” method. With the hopes to give you confidence and inspiration to start your potty training journey.

Keep in mind that our little ones are learning along the way and like anything in life, it is very important that we get all the resources to help and facilitate their needs to set them up for success.

How to Potty Train Your Toddler Using the Oh Crap! Potty-Training Method

Jamie Glowacki is the author of the book “Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right”. She is the expert! She is a professional potty-training toddlers and has personally worked with thousands of families to potty train their children. Jamie is funny, sarcastic, open, and honest in her writing. 

After reading her book and potty training Evelyn in few days, I can not stop recommending this book to others. The book is very informative, it is very straight-foward, gives lots of amazing tips and helps with troubleshooting common problems.

This book is the answer to all of potty-training dilemmas.

All you need to do is follow the steps in the block formula, not moving on to the next block until the previous one is mastered.

In this post, I am going to briefly go over the blocks and what they looked like for us.

I want you to also keep in mind that every child is different with different personalities. One important fact that Jamie points out many times in the book is that you’re the expert on our own child.

The Oh Crap! Potty-Training Method should work for almost any child, but your approach to the blocks is going to look different when considering YOUR child and yourself.

Oh Crap! Potty-Training Method Cheat Sheet

The Oh Crap! Potty Training Method is broken up into 6 blocks.

You stay on each block until it is mastered. However long it takes to be mastered varies so much between children and that’s totally fine and normal!

Some children do this easy peasy. Some children struggle.

Here is a handy Oh Crap! potty training cheat sheet that you can screenshot or print for reference when you’re ready to start potty training.

• Block 1: Peeing and pooping while completely naked. 
• Block 2: Peeing and pooping with their clothes on, commando.
• Block 3: Peeing and pooping in different situations.
• Block 4: Peeing and pooping fully clothed, including underwear!
• Block 5: Consistent, self-initiation.
• Block 6: Night and Nap.

Block 1: Potty Train Naked

Potty Train: have the child completely naked.

For day 1, the book suggest to have the child completely naked and ditch the diapers. We also set up for potty success.

Check out The Ultimate List: Potty-Training Essentials You Don’t Want To Miss here).

So pretty much in the morning, after breakfast, I told Evelyn, No More Diapers!

With no problem, she helped me take her diaper in the pail and waved bye-bye, to the diaper.

I then gave her an excited pep talk about what today meant and gave her one last run down of how all this potty thing will happen. Her naked little booty just sprinted down the hall as I am now really mentally preparing myself to start the day.

To sum up block 1, it took us 2 days to accomplish this block. In these 2 long crazy days, it was nothing but watching her like a hawk, giving her potty reminders, learning her potty communication needs, picking her up mid-pee! Carrying her to the potty saying “oh no, pee goes in the potty, not the floor, and lots of cleaning!

As Jamie discusses in the book, the journey of potty training is taking your child from the “I have no clue, I just peed/pooped” to “I peed/pooped” to “I’m peeing/pooping” to “I need to pee/poop” realization.

Block one is helping to turn on this realization. In this block, you are NEVER to ASK your child if they need to pee/poop. As you learn their behaviors, you can prompt with TELLING them it’s time to pee/poop, but never ASKING.

Tips for Block 1: Potty-Train

• Say “bye-bye diapers” to them with your child.
• Keep your child completely naked for the whole day and watch them like a hawk.
• Stare at your child all day. When you see them start to pee (or poop!) or you can just tell they’re about to, move them to the potty. Tell them plainly, “pee goes in the potty”.
• You will figure out their poop signs first, but hang in there are trust the method when it comes to figuring out their pee signs.
• Have fun activities planed.

Block 2: Potty Train Commando

Peeing and pooping with their clothes on, commando

For this block, the book suggest to put clothes back on your child but with no undies. Jamie says that the underwear just feels too much like a diaper to children.

We moved on with block 2 once we learned how Evelyn’s communicates her potty needs. We stayed in block 2 for 2 days.

Evelyn’s communicated her potty needs by doing the potty dance and walking in circles and say “pee” while rushing to the potty.

On Day 3

It was very frustrating for us because Evelyn became resistant. She would rush to her potty and I would help her sit but she would immediately start freaking out and she’d get up from her potty crying saying “No, No!” and would end up peeing in her pants LITERALLY seconds after getting up from her potty.

To make it short, day 3, we struggled all day getting a successful pee in the potty.

I tried reading her books, playing with her while she sits on her potty, sang songs, took her favorite toys, I hugged her, I did everything I could possibly do to make her feel safe and nothing helped with her releasing her pee in the potty.

Day 3 overall was just a disaster! I wanted to quit thinking she wasn’t ready.

On Day 4

In the morning of day 4, it was just as bad as the previous day. I began loosing hope but then I remember Jamie saying that resistance will happen.

So I quickly pick up her book to read that chapter again. She said that the biggest reason for resistance is because we are over prompting, we are being to hard on our kids, and we are pressuring our child too much. I immediately did some 360 changes on how I was prompting, I had to back off, had to stop being so hard on her, did a change using the adult toilet, and gave her privacy. All these changes happened before non and after that, it was so MAGICAL! Evelyn finally got it, so quickly! Like what, UNBELIEVABLE!

What really helped was letting her use the adult toilet, giving her privacy,and having a soothing toy with her to hold.

Tips for Block 2

• Put clothes on your child but NOT underwear. They are going to be going commando!
• Go for loose pants with elastic bands that you can pull down quickly, or even just dresses for girls.
• Give your child privacy
• Don’t be so hard on yourself or your child
• Take a breather
• Give your child a soothing or favorite toy

Block 3: Potty-Train Small Outings

Peeing and pooping in different situations.

We moved on to block 3 on day 5.

The book suggest to to take small outings. Our first outing was driving to the dry cleaners to pick up some clothes and later this day we took a short walk outside our apartment complex. Both quick outings went pretty well. Jamie said that the idea is simply getting dressed and practice with different stimuli than at home.

Practice peeing before getting in the car. You don’t have to actually GO somewhere specific. Just getting out of the house is enough. 

Day 5 was a successful day!

Tips for Block 3

• Invest in a travel potty and a carseat waterproof liner
• Go for a car ride and get an ice cream cone
• Go for short walks

Block 4: Potty Train Clothes and Underwear!

Peeing and pooping fully clothed, including underwear!

YAY! Underwear! We progressed to block 4, on day 6. Between day four and this point, we haven’t had any accidents. After the first 4 long crazy potty training days, Evelyn picked up the potty thing pretty great.

This day we took an outing to grandmas and she actually had an accident while being there. I wasn’t hard on her for peeing on grandmas floor. I took it as a totally normal thing as it was a new place to go potty and she was unclear on where to go potty. Also, another factor why this accident happen was because grandma didn’t understood Evelyn that she was saying pee.

Tips for Block 4

• Introduce underwear!
• Be consistent
• When outings, be clear on where to potty
• Continue to prompt before you leave the house, before bed, or any other time that just makes sense.

Block 5: Self-Initiation

Consistent, self-initiation.

I feel like Evelyn began to self-initiate on day 3 but the only problem on day 3 was that she didn’t want to release her pee and poop in her potty until making the switch to using the adult toilet. By day 4, she was self-initiating her potty needs with out prompting or reminding her to use the potty.

It has been a whole month since we started potty-training and she’s not had an accident and is self-initiating.

Tips for Block 5

• Block 5 is not something you do, it’s something your child does.
• You will notice that she/he begins to consistently (if not 100%) self-initiate. That is when you have crossed over from a non-potty trained child to a potty-trained child.
• Ease up on prompting when you see this, but don’t stop completely.
• Continue to prompt before you leave the house, before bed, or any other time that just makes sense.

Block 6: Nap and Night Training

We actually didn’t start nap and night training. Day training was already chaotic, can’t imagine how terribly tired I would be after all this.

Therefore, I continued with the nap and night diapers. There were times where she would wake up with a wet diaper and out of surprise by the 3rd week, she has been waking up with a dry diaper, for both naps and nights.

Conclusion

The Oh Crap! Potty-Training method worked like a charm for us. In just 3 days, Evelyn went from “I have no clue” to being able self-initiate her potty needs.

Evelyn has been such an easy girl. Potty-training went quicker than I thought it would take us and it was all because this book answered all my potty-training dilemmas. If you want to successfully potty train your toddler, I highly recommend using the “Oh Crap!” Potty-Training Method from Jamie Glowacki.

Tips:

• Be strongly willing to take on this journey with your child!
• Mental prep yourself and your child!
• Be consistent and committed!
• Be firm!
• Make a plan and stick to it!
• Stay positive!
• Don’t give up!
• Make it fun!
• Don’t Stress!

Preparing Your Toddler for Potty-Training

To prepare your child for success, I have created a list of our potty training essentials. Check it out!

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