My first child was a girl. And because of gender, I assigned the responsibility of potty training to my wife. I guess it was my way out of it. How was I supposed to describe urinating while sitting versus urinating while standing? However, my wife took revenge and she appointed me as the official pool cleaner.

Now that my little girl is a self-sufficient potty user, I have been tasked with potty training my little two year old. I can’t get the gender card out this time. So, I’ve been faced with figuring out how this is going to work.

Here are some areas I’ve been told to look into, and I think they’ll help you too!

let me look at you

Ok, let me clear this up. I’m a little scared to urinate when there are other people around me. Also, this is a private matter. I don’t want anyone to look at me while I pee. My wife along with others told me letting him watch would be a good start. So I decided to try this by leaving the door ajar while I went to the bathroom. As he played in the next room, I didn’t think he would notice. However, before he had a good broadcast, he was there. I guess curiosity got the best of him. He stared at the chamber pot for a long moment, then followed the stream to the spout. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was trying to process everything. When I was done and stuffed everything into my pants, he looked at me, smiled, and then left.

Let him sit on his own potty

I thought this would be a great idea. So I took out the potty that we use for my little girl. I took off his diaper and sat him on it with a book to read. Within minutes she jumped up proudly saying that she had peed. I immediately thought this was going to be a piece of cake. I went into the bathroom and found the floor soaking wet. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong. That’s when I realized there was supposed to be a little shield on the front of the potty. It was not there because the previous user was my girl. We learned our lesson the hard way. Make sure some device is in place before allowing the nozzle to activate.

Provide a goal

When my wife said that you need to provide a target for aiming practice, I thought she was crazy. Why does she need her a target? My mind went back to urinals at a local mall that had little mats inside the urinal with a dartboard on it. There were corresponding rings that were labeled with various dots. I thought this was clever at the time and when my wife brought up the concept I wondered how she knew anything about it. She then informed me that she should use Fruit Loops® or Cheerios®. I finally understood the concept of it. By providing floating objects, my little one will have a target to aim at. Without aim, the ground becomes wet again.

use a stool

While it’s probably a good idea to teach your child to use the potty sitting down, there will come a time when they’ll want to urinate standing up. And since I’m implementing the “Let him look at you” method, I’m not going to adjust my peeing style, so we’ll introduce this method as well. To prepare for this, I have found it best to use a stool. It’s not a step ladder, but just the basic one step stool (we don’t want it to topple over). Without the stool, he pees on the rim of the toilet and the floor gets wet again. The best method for using a stool is to teach your toddler to stand on the stool and rest his knees against the toilet. This will help provide stability while shooting for those Fruit Loops® and Cheerios®. By the time he’s tall enough, hopefully he’ll have mastered the concept of standing up to urinate.

Although these methods seem very simple, they will help make your potty training easier. It is important to remember that your child will learn to be potty trained in his or her own time. It’s okay to encourage him, but don’t let your frustration show when he doesn’t show interest. He be patient and in no time you will have him down.

Good luck and happy potty training!