Parenting

How To Potty Train Your Child In 36 (Extremely Difficult) Steps

by Jamie Johnson
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
potty training toilet
deucee_ / Getty

Well, it’s official. Henry, my three and a half year old, is finally potty trained!

Cue Jock Jams! Turn on the strobe lights! Where are those cats that DJ?

There they are. Thanks guys!

For real, this is a huge #MomWin for me and Henry. For a while, my husband and I thought that he might actually be graduating high school in a Pull-Up.

So, as promised above, here is how to potty train your child in 36 extremely difficult and aggravating steps.

1. Think that potty training will be an absolute walk in the park and set extremely unrealistic expectations.

2. Lower your expectations. Nope, a little lower. Now down five or ten more notches. That’s about right.

3. Buy a $45 Mickey Mouse potty off Amazon with a handle that sings the Hot Dog Dance when you “flush.”

4. Place expensive potty in bathroom, where it will soon just become a piece of decor.

5. Find out your kid would rather continue to poop himself than use the expensive potty.

6. Listen to the “Hot Dog Dance” 1 million times because your kid loves pulling the handle even while simultaneously pooping himself.

7. Ask your kid if he wants to sit on the potty, and watch him kick and scream like a tiny version of the devil himself.

8. Buy big boy underwear with Mickey Mouse on them to try and get him interested.

9. Put interested child in said underwear for him to continue to poop himself.

10. Switch to Pull-Ups.

11. Bribe your kid with candy to go pee pee in the potty.

12. Give your kid 76 pieces of candy in one day because he realizes he can hold it and make himself go a little bit, eat the candy, go a little bit more, eat more candy, etc.

13. Realize that your kid is still peeing in his Pull-Up when he realizes the candy is over for the day and decide to back off until he’s “ready.”

14. Change a diaper one day with a poop the size of your arm and decide it’s time to do this thing again because that was absolutely disgusting.

15. Watch child poop in the backyard like the dog one day and realize between the shock, disgust, and excitement that he didn’t go on the new wood floor and he knows exactly what he is doing with his bowels.

16. Have him to spend the entire weekend naked so he will go use the potty.

17. Realize that this actually works when he poops in the potty for the first time ever and and give him Play-Doh as a prize.

18. Spend the next week attempting to get Play-Doh out of the carpet in the playroom.

19. Watch naked child pee in one of your nice boots.

20. Be relieved when the weekend is over and you can escape the tiny naked terrorist.

21. Continue keeping your child naked any time you are home so he will go potty, which is working.

22. Try to convince the baby sitter to let him run around naked so he can be trained there as well. I got a hard NO on that one.

23. Decide it’s time to try big boy underwear again.

24. Convince him that superheroes do wear big boy underwear. Batman even wears his over his clothes!

25. Spend the next three weeks sitting in the bathroom holding an iPad playing the damn Daddy Finger song while your child attempts to “brown poo poo” in the potty.

26. Celebrate a few “brown poo poo” successes.

27. Clean pee off the floors approximately seventeen times.

28. Fish your child’s favorite action figure out of the potty after he goes “brown poo poo” because Captain America would definitely not make it down.

29. Throw away seven pairs of big boy underwear because you just can’t do what is necessary to clean that without vomiting.

30. Wake up in the middle of the night six times because he had an accident.

31. Realize one day that he is finally getting the hang of all this.

32. Celebrate and tell him how proud you are of his hard work.

33. Find that your child is 99% potty trained and it only took a year.

34. Stash the $45 Mickey potty he never used in the basement for his little brother.

35. Almost shit yourself when you have to take him to potty in a public restroom and he sits on the nasty seat before you can stop him.

36. Realize that you probably should have lowered your expectations even more, but celebrate the fact that you don’t have to buy him diapers anymore by having another baby.

So there it is. How to potty train your child in 36 extremely tedious steps. Anyone can do it! You can thank me in a year when you have completed all the steps.

This article was originally published on