Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki – Physical Book

I wanted to read this book as well as Potty Training in 3 Days in preparation for our potty training journey. I picked and chose what I thought would work for us from the two books. It was so funny to me how much the two books contradict each other, but I think both helped. 

I wanted to start by saying I never expected for Aryi to be potty trained in 3 days. I had hope that he would understand what we are doing in 3 days by following what was outlined in this book. He did. He fully understood what was expected of him. He however, was not physically there yet it took a few days. He was pretty much fully pee potty trained after a week, poop is a whole other battle that we did not get to face. Aryi got sick a few weeks into this potty training process and we decided to take a break. If you have a toddler, you know how it is when they get sick, everything regresses. He was having accidents all day. We should be starting again shortly after I post this.

This book talks about when it’s right to start, myths and misconceptions, mental prep, training, nighttime training, poop (it gets it’s own chapter), prior attempts, day cares, behavior, resets (this is what we are currently doing), along with extra tips and help. There is so much information in this book. There are 277 pages of information. I took notes to make it easier for me. There is a lot of repetition in this book. She likes to summarize something and then break it down further. That was helpful, but also annoying. I felt myself saying many times “you told us this”. I HATE how many times she talks about how amazing she is and how her plan is the best. Like, I bought the book, why are you selling your book on the pages, I bought it already. 

This book completely forgoes signs a kid is ready to potty train and just says 20-30 months. This is insane to me. Especially since I have a preemie. Everyone develops so differently, and different parts of a person develop at different paces. There are language skills, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and understanding. To say that all children are at the same place with all of these skills from 20-30 months is completely insane to me. 

Both of these books pretty much have the same process of take away diapers, use the potty, wake up and have no diapers. 

This book talks about how you should not reward your child for peeing on the potty. I completely disagree with this. Pavlov’s Dog. . . Associate a neutral thing with a positive thing. It only makes sense that a treat will help. 

One thing in this book really stuck with me. The learning process for the child is cluelessness turns to I peed turns to I am peeing turns to I have to pee. I could see this happening before my eyes. It was crazy. We got to I am peeing. We went often. He could go to the toilet and pee, but he was never able to tell me he had to pee before we took our break. 

This book talks about nighttime training. I did read it, but didn’t focus hard on this. We are not planning on addressing this for about another year. 

One big thing I learned from this book is not to say “it’s ok”, because it isn’t ok to pee on the floor or in your pants. I learned to say we pee in the potty and pretty much leave it at that. 

This book talks about starting off naked, then adding pants, then underwear last as you progress. At first this was disgusting to me. I thought Aryi would be peeing everywhere. After day 3 I got a little desperate and we went to naked. It worked wonderfully. No naked accidents. We will be starting from naked next time. 

Poop was a problem and I tried everything from both of these books. The entire chapter on poop did not help. I think poop will just happen when it happens. 

I skipped over the day care chapter because we don’t do that. 

There was a chapter on behavior, but I found Aryi to be pretty good. Yes he throws toys and doesn’t want to share, he runs around like a toddler, and he can’t control his emotions all the time. Overall he is very good. We didn’t get specific negative potty training behavior. 

The reset is where we are now. She says that it can help to start over if there is a piece missing in understanding it can be solved. It is my hope that that will be how it works out. 

Overall there is a lot of good information in this book. I would recommend it, but, give the kid an M&M for god’s sake.