Potty training - is it too soon?

Before Emma was born,  I did a bit of part time EC with Daniel; and we had his morning 'business' sorted. Some people thought it was a bit crazy using the potty with a child as young as Daniel, but it worked for us and I was keen for the whole thing to be as 'natural' as possible and as stress free as possible. I think there is a small window that you can work in before you need to retrain a child from using a nappy and switching to a potty/toilet.

Inevitably, the arrival of Emma meant an upheaval in Daniel's routines and EC and potty training in general took a bit of a back seat. I sort of wish we had persevered with things as I suspect we would be a lot closer than it feels we are now!



We have had a potty in the house since he was around five ish months and have sat him on it at various times to introduce the idea of the potty etc. He knows what it is for and understands where it is etc. However since Emma's arrival it's just been something to sit his bears on or to throw building blocks into.

Around 6-8 weeks ago he became very insistent that he wore his big boy pants and not his nappies. I happily obliged and rearranged our plans and opted for a day in the house, anticipating that he might want to potty train. It started promisingly but he got upset when I suggested he used the potty and instead cried for a nappy. Nothing really came of it, other than a few trickles around the house!

The team at LumiPotti saw my tweets and asked me if we would like to try their potty. I wondered if the arrival of a new potty might spur Daniel into action so we agreed to take a look.

I have been reading a book called Once Upon a Potty with Daniel (see here) and in this book the boy's Grandma brings him a gift of a Potty. So, when Daniel's Grandma was here we opened the potty; talking about the story in the book which he is very familiar with.

He was very excited and as you can see from the pic at the bottom was keen to show me how it worked!

Disappointingly, we have had some limited success; I am trying to take things at Daniel's pace and encourage him to use the potty; he knows when he needs to go but asks for a nappy, so we need to re-train him away from that. He will get there and I am not in any huge rush at the moment. It does feel all very frustrating given where I felt we were pre-Emma, but it is how it is and what I don't want is to make it a battleground or a stressful time.

The team at LumiPotti also hold regular clinics via twitter and Facebook to help with any questions that you might have, and they gave me some advice to try to distract him when on the potty by blowing bubbles - this seems to have helped as he will tell me he needs the potty and asks for bubbles, he doesn't always do what he needs to do, but we are getting there. There is also a lot of helpful advice on their website, so do take a look here if you are at this stage with your little one.

The LumiPotti itself is a standard potty; but the unique thing is that it has a night light built into the back of it

stock photo - I haven't been able to get a good enough picture with the light!

This clips out of the potty and can be used for night time training to guide the child to the potty. It lights up when it detects movement and will stay lit, helping to guide your child to the potty.

I have tried this and it does work... whether or not Daniel will successfully make it to the potty is another matter, but it does come on when movement is detected.


I like this idea but we haven't had opportunity to really test that feature yet as we aren't near that stage at the moment. However, the light is bright enough and in time could be used on its own to guide Daniel out to the bathroom, rather than putting all the lights on.

I did find it a little fiddly to remove the light bit, so not sure how that would work for a child. You also have to be careful when rinsing the potty out; it is fiddly to take the light out each time so I think I would probably just rinse it really carefully or remove the light in the daytime when we get to more frequent potty use.

The potty retails at £23.99. You can buy potty's that are much cheaper and on the very basic end of things but I think this is well priced when you consider it's features and the price of other pottys (which can be around £20 - £28). The night light feature will come in useful once the potty is no longer needed too.

For now, we will continue to take things slowly, and maybe even begin to introduce some part time EC with Emma.