Author Topic: Potty training- potties  (Read 2989 times)

I'm a red panda

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Potty training- potties
« on: January 02, 2019, 12:44:36 PM »
Is a stand alone potty really necessary?

Can I get by with just the seat you put on top of the toilet to make it more comfortable for the kid, and less likely for them to fall in?

The potty just seems 1) gross, 2)another piece of clutter, 3)limited in lifespan, and 4) still have to teach them to transition to the toilet.

What has been other people's experience?

Mongoose

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2019, 12:58:31 PM »
The seat on top of the potty worked for us, with a small step in front of it because the regular toilet was too high for the kids. We do travel by car quite frequently and a travel potty with disposable bag inserts, while not necessarily Mustachian or terribly friendly to the environment, was a lifesaver.

Do you have 2 bathrooms? My one complaint was the kiddos sitting forever on the toilet just because they could and blocking access for everyone else. YMMV.

I'm a red panda

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2019, 01:08:50 PM »
The seat on top of the potty worked for us, with a small step in front of it because the regular toilet was too high for the kids. We do travel by car quite frequently and a travel potty with disposable bag inserts, while not necessarily Mustachian or terribly friendly to the environment, was a lifesaver.

Do you have 2 bathrooms? My one complaint was the kiddos sitting forever on the toilet just because they could and blocking access for everyone else. YMMV.

This is really good to hear! 
I would also get a step stool; and yes, kiddo has her own bathroom!

FLBiker

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2019, 01:48:24 PM »
We almost exclusively used toilet seats.  However, we do have a potty in kiddos room for middle of the night situations (almost never used).  We also kept on in the car early into potty training, and THAT was very helpful.

shelivesthedream

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2019, 01:27:27 AM »
We're sitting BabySLTD on the toilet on an adaptor seat. I agree, potties seem gross! In my researches, the two advantages seem to be:

1. Can keep one in the car, so no weirdness with unfamiliar toilets or problems going by the side of the road if urgent.
2. Your child will be able to use a potty completely by themselves earlier than a toilet seat. No climbing involved a d you can keep one in every room (whereas we'd at the very least have to let him through the stair gates from downstairs). But you'll probably still be helping her wipe for a while, so that might not gain you much!

We basically figured that scraping poo off his bottom and scraping poo out of a potty were largely equivalent for us, and I've heard of too many children who are afraid of the big toilet.

reeshau

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #5 on: January 03, 2019, 02:10:20 AM »
We tried a stand alone potty with my son early on, mainly to just "practice" going to the toilet--to get used to the motions, and sitting.  When he really started to go, we went with adapters, and then switched out our toilet lids to ones with built-in seat adapters, like this:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/TOPSEAT-TinyHiney-Slow-Close-Children-s-Round-Closed-Front-Toilet-Seat-in-White-6TSTR9999SL/300591236

These have worked quite well, in that guests aren't frozen over the awkward question of what to do with the seat.  DS also does have the fear of big toilets, so we bought a travel adapter--thin, like these built-ins, and foldable so OK for air travel, for example.

meerkat

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2019, 07:35:52 AM »
We tried a stand alone potty with my son early on, mainly to just "practice" going to the toilet--to get used to the motions, and sitting.  When he really started to go, we went with adapters, and then switched out our toilet lids to ones with built-in seat adapters, like this:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/TOPSEAT-TinyHiney-Slow-Close-Children-s-Round-Closed-Front-Toilet-Seat-in-White-6TSTR9999SL/300591236

These have worked quite well, in that guests aren't frozen over the awkward question of what to do with the seat.  DS also does have the fear of big toilets, so we bought a travel adapter--thin, like these built-ins, and foldable so OK for air travel, for example.

We have something like that and LOVE it. I also got a Squatty Potty stool which fits nicely around the toilet, the taller size stool works for our small-for-his-age kiddo so he can sit with the same posture adults do normally.

x02947

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2019, 10:53:05 AM »
Heh.  Just last night talked to DW about finding ours in the garage for DD #2- starting in 2 weeks... :)

Are they necessary?  Not by any means.  But I found it really helpful for the first week or so to have a few strategically placed around the house, so your kid is never more than 5 seconds away from a place to go while they are still learning.  (just buy a couple ones at consignment for $5 and spray down with lysol/bleach.  You can resell them afterwards!) Also have a toilet seat adapter and step stool, so they learn to use the actual toilet at this time as well.  The usefulness of the stand alone goes down as the kid can "hold it" long enough to make it to the actual toilet.

Very useful to have one in the car for a while, but even then you don't have to have the actual potty if you are concerned about size/space/room.  A big mason jar (with lid!) will do fine.

Good luck! (I'm assuming?)

Slow&Steady

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2019, 03:22:00 PM »
We tried a stand alone potty with my son early on, mainly to just "practice" going to the toilet--to get used to the motions, and sitting.  When he really started to go, we went with adapters, and then switched out our toilet lids to ones with built-in seat adapters, like this:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/TOPSEAT-TinyHiney-Slow-Close-Children-s-Round-Closed-Front-Toilet-Seat-in-White-6TSTR9999SL/300591236

These have worked quite well, in that guests aren't frozen over the awkward question of what to do with the seat.  DS also does have the fear of big toilets, so we bought a travel adapter--thin, like these built-ins, and foldable so OK for air travel, for example.

We have something like that and LOVE it. I also got a Squatty Potty stool which fits nicely around the toilet, the taller size stool works for our small-for-his-age kiddo so he can sit with the same posture adults do normally.

This seat and the stool combo is exactly what we have/use.

Cassie

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #9 on: January 04, 2019, 03:30:53 PM »
We only had one bathroom so had a separate potty for the boys and they would often go while we went.   Probably used it about 6 months with each of the boys.

Mountainbug

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2019, 06:56:58 PM »
We have both. I was told I didn’t need a stand alone little potty and to just use the adapter, and for my kid that was a disaster. We ended up having to buy a little potty out of desperation and after that potty training was a breeze. So, maybe keep an open mind. I agree scraping poop off the little potty sucks but so does cleaning it out of your rug because your kid shit on the floor rather than use the big toilet.

LaineyAZ

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #11 on: January 04, 2019, 07:07:23 PM »
Another suggestion I'd read about:  use paper coffee filters in the stand-alone potties for easy cleanup. 

cats

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #12 on: January 07, 2019, 03:18:53 PM »
We got one free as a hand-me-down, so they don't have to be too wasteful.

I currently find it useful for two things:

1) Middle of the night: we leave the potty in the bedroom and it seems to cue him to actually get up and pee (or, more often, tell us that he needs to pee so we can help him) instead of wetting the bed (which was happening way too often before).

2) We only have one bathroom, it's good to have the potty handy if kid needs to go NOW and one of us is using the toilet


Initially, we had an insert/adapter and TBH, I found it a bit of a pain.  Whenever kid wants to go, you have to go in and get the adapter on the toilet for them.  Initially they may not be able to hold it for long, so the 10 seconds you spend slapping the adapter on can actually be critical.  Also, for the first few days you may be putting your kid on the potty a LOT, taking the adapter on and off over and over again is annoying. Now I mostly just plop kid on toilet with no adapter (he's pretty big though, so I have zero concerns about him falling in).  So the adapter was actually the more useless option for us.

Our son also did settle into a poop 1x/day at about the same time every day routine pretty quickly after potty training, if I know he's at a time when he's likely to poop, he goes on the toilet, so most of the time all we are cleaning out of the potty is pee, which is clearly pretty simple.  Cleaning poop out of the potty is definitely not on my list of fun things to do.

tthree

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #13 on: January 07, 2019, 07:18:51 PM »
Integrated potty seat. We don't have the exact one in the link, but you get the idea.  Definitely a great purchase.  My nine year still prefers to take a number 2 on this seat, as it "fits his butt better".....lol.

MDfive21

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #14 on: January 08, 2019, 10:28:11 AM »
Integrated potty seat. We don't have the exact one in the link, but you get the idea.  Definitely a great purchase.  My nine year still prefers to take a number 2 on this seat, as it "fits his butt better".....lol.

exactly what we used.  we had one with a magnet that kept the small seat up when you put up the big seat, but easily put down when kiddo needed to go.  this and a stool worked a charm.  i too thought the standalone was wrong for all the OP reasons.

kimmarg

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #15 on: January 08, 2019, 12:57:29 PM »
Totally recommend the dual adult/child size toilet seat. That and a cheap step stool and it works fine for both the adults and the toddler. I feel like the point is to teach them to use the toilet so they might as well start with that. If I wanted to deal with more poop/pee we'd still be in diapers :)

shelivesthedream

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #16 on: January 08, 2019, 03:59:34 PM »
We have an easy solution to cats's problem of timing (although we're a way off from actual official potty training): the default position of the adapter is ON the toilet. Adults remove it to go then put it back.

I'm a red panda

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #17 on: January 08, 2019, 04:02:05 PM »
We have an easy solution to cats's problem of timing (although we're a way off from actual official potty training): the default position of the adapter is ON the toilet. Adults remove it to go then put it back.

That was the plan. We can get buy without using her bathroom anyway

chemistk

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Re: Potty training- potties
« Reply #18 on: January 14, 2019, 05:59:13 AM »
Sometimes kids really throw curveballs.

In short - I view standalone potties good for two things: 1) you have one bathroom and it's there as an emergency location in case the main toilet is occupied. 2) you're on a car trip and your kid (esp. girls) needs a place to go. (bonus: 3) if your kid is terrified of falling into the big toilet and drowning, like I was when I was a toddler)

Our son was averse to potty training - not for fear of the toilet but just pure apathy. So we asked him - "would you like to use a potty just your size". He was super enthusiastic, he wanted a specific color and everything. He was so excited. It came and he decided he didn't want to use it. We already had a toilet seat insert, which he also refused to use. He finally decided that he preferred just using the regular seat after all.

Pro: we can get him to use the bathroom anywhere.

Con: toddler logic is infuriating.