Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 136 | Potty Training 101 with Allison Jandu

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Today we interviewed a highly successful potty training expert…yep, you heard that right!! Allison Jandu, known as The Potty Training Consultant, has helped over 4,500 families successfully potty train their children and has dedicated her life to helping other families learn the ins and outs of research-based potty training methods. As if that’s not cool enough, Allison has partnered with us over here at FamilyMade Media to create an all-inclusive “Potty Training Course” that is available now!! We’re so excited for you to have access to her course and we’re confident that through Allison’s 5,000+ hours of potty training research that we ALL have something we can learn from her! Trust us, if you have kids or know kids, you don’t want to miss this episode OR her new course. Hope you enjoy! Check out the Potty Training course HERE ▶ https://www.pottytraining101.com Learn more about The Potty Training Consultant ▶ https://www.pottytrainingconsultant.com/ This podcast is Sponsored by Better Help ▶ Our listeners get 10% off their first month at https://www.BetterHelp.com/EASTFAM Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ttp://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. what's up everybody welcome back to couple things with Sean and Andrew a podcast all about couples and the things they go through today's topic is us as a couple learning something new and that we're going through which is us as parents learning how to potty train our two year old

that's right we were kind of lost confused we felt overwhelmed with the with the task of potty training which so they've been you know people have been potty training for thousands of years you could say thousands of years so you'd think we would be able to figure it out but we couldn't so we went out and found the best person there is to teach us about potty training and that is the potty training consultant alison jandu let me just give you some stats on alison so she's helped over five thousand families through her program that has over five thousand hours of research yep the wildest thing I learned about her is that she was originally a forensic scientist. Yeah. And then she pivoted into potty training when she started having kids. She has a 98% success rate with her program. Yeah.

And helped us understand when to start potty training, how long the whole process is going to take, what we need. And so thank you, Alison, for helping us. She also has a program that can help you. It's called Potty Training 101, where she goes through all the things that we learned so that you can as well and make the process as easy and approachable as possible. And at the end of the day, make your relationship, not have to go through the frustrations of, you know. Whose relationship? You and Drew?

Or you have my? No, the spouses, the parents. We have found it because of our being equipped with the knowledge to be a pleasant experience now. So anyway, we'll link all that information down below, including the Pottie Training 101. And let's roll into this one with Allison Jandu. So ladies and gentlemen, we're just going to roll right into this. Let me introduce you to the one, the only, Alison Jandu.

You may know her as the potty training consultant. Allison has over 5,000 hours of evidence-based research. She's helped over 5,000 families in their potty training process, have saved over 5 million diapers and has a 98% success rate. So if you have potty training questions, you've come to the right place with Allison. Allison, thanks for joining us. We're pumped to have this conversation. And we have a lot of questions ourselves.

Yes, obviously. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm always happy to talk about potty training. So before we get started, too, we also want to say that Allison has an amazing online course that walks you step by step through the whole potty training process, like what products to use, how to do the whole thing.

I literally was just asking her a question because we're having regressions with Drew. She keeps having accidents at school, which also makes me like so sad as a mom. I'm like, do you feel embarrassed? Do you feel nervous? Like, how can I help you? Whatever. So within this podcast, we're not going to give away all the secrets because we want people to go by your course.

But we want to learn more about you and your mom life and your life at home and how you kind of got started with all of this. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think potty training consultant isn't necessarily what I wanted to be when I grew up kind of thing. Like it was something that happened with motherhood. I'm a mom of two myself, so my kids are, my son Evan is eight, and my daughter, Layla, is six. So obviously, I've, I potty trained them.

And when I was working on potty training specifically with my daughter, because she had struggled with a lot of, like, constipation issues and things like that from the time she was like a baby. So my son potty trained pretty easily, but when it came time to potty train Layla, it was a lot more challenging. So I started trying to do like a lot of research and stuff online to figure out the best way to help her because what we had, you know, the process that we did with my son just wasn't, it wasn't cutting it with her. And so I just started to try to dig into it. And I was like, where, like, where's the science on this stuff? Like I wanted to, I was searching for some kind

of support, some kind of like evidence based, you know, research, facts. And, like a resource that I could go to to get these answers and I just really wasn't finding anything and thinking to myself I know I can't be the only one struggling with potty training I decided from that point that I was going to put all of my spare time into learning as much as I possibly could about potty training early childhood development human behavior psychology kind of all the important factors that go into shaping the potty training experience, and I just wanted to, I wanted to become that resource for parents. And I'm a very science-minded kind of person. So I'm not, I'm not just

out there saying, no, do this, because this is what I did with my kids. Like, I really have dived into the actual science and research and stuff that's been done on the different aspects of potty training to find solutions, you know, that will work. And so hopefully that's what parents find when they come to my community. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally, the ultimate off-road challenge.

Learn more at landrover.ca. I got to be honest with you, I have not felt like there's been many daunting things, in parenting to, like, there are definitely milestones and like, hey, I put my, I changed my first diaper and like, it's all new. But for some reason for me, potty training was like, I was definitely trying to delay that as much as possible because it felt like such a arduous process. I didn't know what to do. And there's all like this psychology behind it too, which is not everyone listening will have kids that are potty training or be interested in the subject at all. But for those who do

have kids who maybe are the body training process or are approaching that age you'll understand that like there's there's a lot that goes to it and that's one thing that I was impressed as we've been through your course is like that

there's a lot of components and to execute these all well like from the psychological to like the encouragement and then the actual execution of it and making it like clearly communicated to the kid and making them feel excited about the process themselves there's just a lot to it and and as with everything as a parent like you

just want to make sure you're doing it thoughtfully and that's what I appreciate about your course is like you having helped 5,000 people you have wisdom that we would never be able to get on our own like no yeah it's true and no two potty training journeys look exactly the same either so so I think it is helpful to have that kind of insight of having seen so many different things like i don't think there's anything that i haven't seen when it comes to potty training you know so i i do try to apply all of that knowledge and experience into um into what i teach parents so that way hopefully it's not a struggle and it can actually be something potentially that you enjoy like that you get to enjoy doing with your child i'm giggling a little bit because i feel like for the most part

potty training our daughter was fairly easy like definitely thanks to alison yes because you came you literally came in the middle of it and i was like oh this all makes sense um yeah but for her it was it was not crazy i had my frustrated moments where i was like dude just just pee just get on the toilet and pee we're going to get in the car i know you're gonna whatever but besides that she was very good i'm giggling at the idea of potty training our son because and now granted i don't expect him to have any control whatsoever at the moment because he's just one but the other day literally took his diaper off was trying to like give him a little bit of free time just because he had like a diaper rash and dude walked straight to the mini fridge opened the mini fridge and peed in

the mini fridge wow okay I had just changed his diaper I was like are you kidding me he's just a wild one but that's the thing you hear stories like going into it where you're like hey I'm potterning my kid and they smeared poop all over the wall or like they all over their crib and it's like i'm actually curious alison what are some of the stories not to put you on the spot but like the horror story side of things where you're like wow this did not go as planned yeah so i mean from from more of like i guess uh you'll laugh at this later kind of standpoint like um definitely the the kind of poop exploration phase with some kids can be kind of That's going to be our son.

Shocking to handle at first. So there's definitely a lot of stories I could tell about that as far as kids just, you know, finger painting for a lack of a better explanation. Yeah, I know, super gross. But kids are curious, you know, like they don't necessarily know that they're not supposed to do that. And they're like, what's this stuff coming out of my body? So, yeah, that's definitely, and that obviously doesn't have. with every single child, but that can definitely be a bit off-putting with the process. I think the kind of the most like extreme or like worrisome kind of stories are where kids will just

kind of withhold altogether. Like maybe they have some kind of, you know, deep-rooted anxiety surrounding using the potty or not having their diapers anymore. And they just start to kind of like hold in all their pee and poop altogether and um and that can be very stressful obviously to deal with because then we have to start worrying about like health related issues and and all of those kinds of things so there are definitely um you know some some extremes that you encounter during the process but i think you know like what you're talking about between drew and jet like it usually is the opposite between first and second kids So prepare yourself for that.

I don't know why that is, but it just does tend to be that way. But hopefully, like, he starts to see, you know, big sister doing it and he'll, you know, pick up on it. He might be ready a little bit more quickly because he is getting that exposure through her. So it definitely sounds like he's comfortable peeing without a diaper. So that's, you know, if you want to find the silver lining, like, there you go. in the in the mini fridge obviously we would have to redirect that somehow um but yeah boys can be a different experience not necessarily harder or easier but between first and second kids for whatever reason it does tend to be a different experience i was going to say something that i love about

your program and everything that you stand for to is like the psychological side and the like childhood development side um i feel like we're finally getting into a generation where people are very like aware of that and they're aware of how things can affect children when they're grown and I remember reading this book it was called one two three magic about like for a lack of a better word disciplining your kid and how having how to teach the word discipline to them from a young age and I got really nervous about that book but when I read it it was basically the cycle like the psychology book for parents right and it was teaching you the childhood development side of kids and how they're incapable of understanding certain things and usually it's the parent

who needs to just take a chill pill and what I love about like the psychology side of it is you're truly protecting the child and I feel like for so many people when it comes to potty training and discipline it's like oh just rip the bandaid just do it and there's so many things that can go wrong and that aren't good for the kid I've even felt it personally within potty training you get so frustrated. Oh, yeah. And I'll be sitting, I remember sitting there, and Drew is sitting on the potty, and she was just, like, living in her own little world.

And I was like, girl, you got to go potty. Right. You just got to try. And then they get into that, like, rebuttal phase. I lack of a better word. I can't, what's the word? Not refusal, but like. Like resistance?

Yes. Where they're just like, I don't want to. Yeah. And just because I'm saying she should. And I remember she looked at me one day as she's sitting on the potty. She goes, Mom, are you frustrated? And I was like, yes. Yes, I am.

I'm not frustrated at you, though. I'm frustrated. Right. And it was just so cute. Yeah. It can be a very, I mean, it's definitely a trying time, you know, because I think a lot of parents feel a lot of pressure to get it done. And you probably hear all these stories about like, oh, potty train in three days and like all this stuff. And then you get these kind of like unrealistic.

expectations of what the experience might be like for you and then you start doing it yourself and it's not that and you're like what am I doing wrong and it's it's not necessarily that at all but I think that potty training should be I always say that you know it should be something that you're doing with your child instead of to your child and it's something that if you kind of involve them in the process you'll you'll see less of those power struggles you'll see less of that resistance because it'll be like something that you're doing together, you know, instead of something that is being forced on them. So I think it's helpful also if parents kind of get into that mindset before you start

the process too. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant or is it croissant no matter how you say it. Start your day with freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery flaky croissant. Try it with maple brown butter today at Tim's at participating restaurants in Canada for limited time. let's take a minute to thank our sponsor this week better help with all the holidays coming up we all know how stressful this time of year can be whether it's shopping traveling or just being overwhelmed about all the moving parts i feel you trust me yeah it definitely can be a lot especially as a parent i feel like we all put so much pressure on ourselves to make it perfect for the kids and all the people in our lives that we forget what the holidays are actually about i agree and we both made it a goal to be more present with the kids and try not let the little things get to us this year, which is why now more than ever we're leaning in to BetterHelp. That's right. BetterHelp has been so beneficial to our mental health, and we love that there are so many ways to chat with your licensed therapist. I use the chat

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That's the, so the wisdom is the one aspect that I think is just really fascinating about the information that you provide. And the empathy that you build is the other thing. So, like, again, for me, it was daunting. It was really like the first couple times that drew, maybe like three times. She went to the bathroom and then she kind of starts to build an understanding of it. But now it's become like this thing that we, it's exciting. Like every time Drew will be like, I got to go potty. And then we all scream, we're like, let's go.

Like, she's excited about it. And then, you know, it's like a fun. I will remember this phase forever because it's like been a memory now as opposed to like this, I don't know, scary thing. So it's great. Right. Yeah. No, it really can be.

And that's kind of something that I hope parents see if they, take my course too is that it doesn't have to be this like dreadful experience that you just have to kind of get through like it can be a kind of cool bonding experience because this is like a pretty major major milestone this is like a skill obviously a lifelong skill and getting to watch them learn that and seeing those gears turn and like things starting to click into place I always found to be like such a rewarding feeling um as a parent and you know as a consultant so it's um you know it can be a positive experience it doesn't have to be something dreadful so you alluded to the fact that you didn't think that you would be a potty turning consultant what were your

plans before you got into this alison um well i was i worked in a lab um i went to school for forensic science actually so i have a very kind of strong science background and um i was i was just working in a laboratory doing doing the science nerd thing and that was kind of like what I always was drawn to it's like the way that my mind kind of functions I find so um yeah definitely didn't see it shifting into the potty training realm necessarily but it's cool being able to apply um you know my like kind of my natural draw to science to what I'm doing now because I do think that it helps kind of clarify things for people. Like I like to help people understand the why behind we do certain things when it comes to potty training. And instead of just saying, no, do this, I try to

explain, you know, why we're doing it and why it's beneficial to do it that way and why that makes sense. So, so, yeah, so definitely have always been kind of a sciencey person. And I don't know, if I didn't become a mom, maybe I would still be working in a lab somewhere. it slightly into the title here of a couple things um did the research and data behind potty training actually help you and your husband navigate the potty training phase yeah totally um so i found a couple of really cool um i find them cool because um but like really informative kind of um research articles that have been done about um children who would struggle with poop related issues when it came to potty training and we were able to kind of implement some of those strategies that they talked about or, you know, things to avoid doing kind of to ease the process.

And it did actually really help really quickly. So there definitely is merit behind, you know, the science and this research that's being done. And, yeah, we were eventually able to get there. And as soon as we made a couple of small changes with what we were doing, the rest kind of fell into place really easily so it worked out that's the other thing i love about the course wisdom empathy and then the education again potty training it could be such like a i don't really care like just get me through it but i found i found it fascinating part of your course that you offer is like this hey there's different ways to do this we spoke about some people never put

diapers on their what is that called they never put diapers on the kids ever yeah elimination communication yeah so what yes that is um i don't think Sean i don't think you and I got a chance to talk about that too much but yeah so it's like where from birth it can be as young as birth i mean some parents started later on or whatever but as an infant um parents will not put diapers on their child and instead um toilet them or potty them um just by like kind of watching their signals their cues um sometimes uh parents are able to kind of like train their their child to like release with a certain sound that they make or or something like that it's wild um so yeah so sometimes like some families don't use diapers at all and it's adapted actually which it makes a

lot of sense if you think about like where this originated from because it originated from techniques used like over in the far east where obviously disposable diapers aren't as readily available over there to family so you know they try to get their child eliminating waste in the most hygienic way possible without having access to diapers and that's kind of what they do there and it's worked for thousands and thousands of years for them so it's becoming more and more mainstream over here massive respect but in the yes yeah it's very time-consuming for sure like it's you have to be very in tune to your child and like with them constantly in order to well and you think like an infant he's like every 20 30 minutes yeah

yeah that's what I love that's one of the things I love about parenting it's like it exposes such style differences between and it's like especially with stuff like hygiene and and you know potty yeah some parents can handle the situation and you'd be like wow really that's you're not putting any diapers on the kid ever I did not with that you and like yeah that tells me something about that's interesting it's just like not good or bad there's no right or wrong way but it's like it's like revealing to a certain you know um to go through a couple of like hard hit not hard hitting but like the most common question hard hitting potty training questions yeah putting you on the spot

alison um but to give people a little taste of like what they can expect to see within the course. When number one, I feel like it's the number one question people would ask her is when would you recommend potty training a kit? Sure. Like from an age standpoint, all of the research and stuff that's been done and the guidelines from like the American Academy and Pediatrics all suggest right around the two year mark as being kind of like the ideal age to at least start introducing the concept of potty training to your child um you know obviously you can't nail it down to like one specific day or one one specific month that works and and that age is going to fluctuate from child to child based on

on different things but um from an age perspective um the best science that we have for obviously you know neurotypical typically developed children um is right around that two year mark is kind of like the sweet spot a lot of people say so Wow. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western.

Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. I know. Do you mind if you ask some of the personal questions like the regression? Like how? Yeah. Like the question I asked you before we even started this was like regression wise. our daughter had has done a phenomenal job pod training she had very very few accidents and even if they were accidents i almost put that more on us at the beginning because sure i would expect her

too soon to learn how to come communicate with me um so i just wasn't checking in enough but right now as we speak right now as we speak she she's in a regression yeah she is in a regression where she started school and almost every school day so monday wednesday friday she has an accident when they go out on the playground and so they have to like change and do all these things and i'm just curious your advice there wisdom can i also just the personal anecdote that just breaks my heart is drew usually so excited for school and after the first day i picked her up and usually she's like chatting about her friends and what happened that day i'm not saying she's giving a full debrief but like the first day i picked her up she was super quiet and like staring out the window and then

we got a call from the teacher saying that she had an accident and I was like oh my gosh like she she might have been quiet I don't know because she felt like shame about this and I was like dang my little girl so anyway if you have advice we'd love it sure yeah no I know it can be it can be heartbreaking especially when they have that kind of like maybe disappointed feeling in themselves and that's really hard hard to watch but I mean as a as a good thing at least she obviously clearly knows that, you know, she made a mistake. And we all make mistakes, you know, as we're mastering new things. So it's definitely nothing to, to fault her for or anything like that. You said it's happening every time when she's on the playground. And that is like super common.

Like the probably the most common place for accidents to occur is when a child is on the playground or playing outside. And a lot of times I think it can either. be because they're just too caught up in the fun to be able to listen to their body signals and, you know, take appropriate action to make sure they make it to the potty in time. Or also it could be maybe a lack of communication between, maybe between Drew and the teacher. Like maybe she doesn't fully know that it's okay to be able to go back inside if she feels the need to have to go to the potty and maybe she tries to hold it a little too long and she can't hold it anymore and she just ends up having an accident that can happen sometimes too.

So my recommendation would be, since it's happening at the same time every day, to try to just do a little prompt before she goes outside, just be like, okay, before we go outside, we have to sit on the potty first, have her use the potty, and that way, you know, she can hopefully empty her bladder then and she won't have to worry about having accidents while she's out. It'll help kind of renew her confidence in using the potty and in her. other aspects too. So that would probably be my recommendation there. Probably wouldn't stress over it too much. Regressions are typically only a concern when you start noticing it happen way more consistently. So like if she was having accidents both at home and at school, if she was

having more accidents than she was actually using the potty. So as long as she's still doing pretty good using the potty at other times. I wouldn't be super concerned about it. I think it's probably just something that she's going through right now and something that you can probably resolve with just maybe having like a little meeting with Drew and the teacher and you guys and just kind of getting down on Drew's level and being like, look, baby, if you need to, you know, use the potty while you're outside, it's totally fine. You can ask Ms. So-and-so and she'll help you use the potty, won't you? And she can be like, yeah, Drew, of course, I'll help you. And maybe that can just kind of like help get everything out in the open and make Drew feel a little bit more comfortable about it, but also giving her the added

boost of just say, hey, babes, before we go outside, we're going to have to sit on the potty first. And that will just get her back on the right track, I think. You take a step back. It is kind of the cutest thing ever. You're dealing with, like, little humans learning how to use a toilet. It's adorable. And then you even are dealing with little toilets, too. It's all. True. It's so cute. Yeah. Yeah. It's a growing experience for sure. It is totally.

That reminded me of all the scripts and tools like calendars or like even a list of of like treats you can have for your kid. You do a great job at providing all the information, putting it in one place so that you could focus on the kid and not having to, you know, Google this and then Google that and then pull this from that source. So I really appreciated that about the course where it's like I really felt you gave all the resources necessary to set us up for success. So thank you, Allison. Yeah, no problem. I tried to do as much as much of the work as I could for you so that hopefully, like you said,

you're just able to kind of, you know, implement your strategy and be able to focus on your child and you don't have to worry about all these other obscure, obscure details. Like you can just have your plan lined up before you start. And I usually find that that tends to just make the process more easy and it keeps you more committed too, I think, if you have a plan in advance because you're like, nope, we decided this is it. We're going to do it. And it keeps you kind of from like plopping back and forth between are we going to start now or no, I'll just wait another weekend. It kind of helps you. That was us. Yeah. We also, we probably started later like after that two year mark that's recommended because like Drew was in the mommy

and me classes and the teacher was like, we don't want you potty training while she's also like alternating between who's kind of overseeing her. And you do talk about like, in those scenarios where that's a must like how to how to keep communication uh coherent across all different groups but i do want to talk about naps and nighttime these are all from like we are needing advice right now so sure how do we handle that please yeah definitely so um i know out of the daunting you know process of potty training as a whole the the sleep periods are probably the most daunting because I think a lot of parents don't know exactly how they're supposed to handle that. Like, are we supposed to just keep them in diapers until they start waking up

dry on their own? Are we supposed to, you know, take the diapers off altogether? What are we supposed to do? And so I usually recommend doing a little bit of kind of like prep first to decide if you're actually going to start the, at least the nighttime portion of the process all at the same time or if you're going to wait and kind of tackle that later. Because what ends up happening is like a lot of kids as especially as they're approaching potty training readiness are actually starting to sleep through the night dry and we just don't realize it because they pee it in their nighttime diaper when they first wake up in the morning which kind of gives us the false impression that they've been peeing all night long there's no way that they're ready

to sleep without a diaper and that kind of thing but in reality they have held it all night long and they just peed as soon as they woke up like every human does um so doing a couple of like checks in the morning. So going into your child's room about 15 minutes or so before they wake up, trying to feel their diaper and see how wet it is at that point. If it's super saturated then, you're okay to wait and do the nighttime portion of the process later. But you might be pleasantly surprised and find that they're dry or mostly dry at that time. And then it's an easier decision to just kind of dive in for consistency's sake and say, we'll just say goodbye to all the diapers. so that way the expectations are clear

that all pee and poop are going to go in the potty now and it just makes the process tend to go a lot more quickly, efficiently, whatever. For nighttime, or sorry, for nap time specifically, I do recommend getting rid of the diapers for naps from the very beginning, just so that you know you don't have any diapers during the day at all.

And what this does, again, is it sends a clear expectation that, nope, we're using the potty, we're not using a diaper. And it keeps your child from potentially just kind of like holding their pee and poop until they get access to the nap time diaper. And that can kind of be a hard habit to break. So it helps prevent confusion from them, like, wait, do they want me to use the potty or do they want me to wait for my diaper? And then it also just, you know, kind of streamlines the whole point. process. Thank you. Reading, playing, learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision.

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Okay. Have we? No, just the nap time. Sometimes it is like, it's definitely easier to just put a diaper on. Oh, for sure. It's definitely easier. Yeah. Okay, so we didn't do that.

We did the potty training outside of crib time. Crib time and diaper time. Sure. And I will say, though, usually in nap, she wakes up dry. completely dry. Yeah. And then we'll go potty. She's woken up a few times in the morning dry, but I do think she does tend to like go potty as

soon as she wakes up. Yeah. But the question that I have is she is still a crib sleeper. She still sleeps in the crib, loves her crib. And is it okay to pull the diaper when you don't have a bed that she has access to a potty in? That's a great question. And I think a lot of parents are confused about that. like because a lot of the sleep guidelines are like keep them in the crib until they're at least three years old and that conflicts obviously with our readiness age for potty training of two years old so do we have to wait to start potty training until they're three and they're out of their crib like what do we do um but actually not much changes if they're in the crib versus sleeping in their own bed uh i recommend having like a little kind of potty station in their room where you can just keep like a little floor potty

like on top of a towel with some, you know, clean clothes and some toilet paper so that if they have to go potty in the night, you can just easily kind of lift them out of their cribs, set them on the potty, and then put them right back to bed very quickly. Most of the time I find that even if kids are older and they're sleeping in like toddler beds or their own beds anyway, they're still going to call for your help regardless. So they're not going to necessarily, it's very rare that they'll get out of bed by themselves, go use the potty, and then put them. themselves back to bed. So your level of involvement isn't going to change that much versus, you know, between crib versus bed. But I definitely would recommend having like a monitor

or something in their room. So that way if, you know, you can listen for those first signs of them like stirring or kind of whining in their sleep that they might have to pee. And then you can kind of go in quickly and get them because obviously lifting them out of the crib is going to take a little bit more time than just kind of scooping them out of their bed. So can I ask, so like The two-year mark is the average or standard. But what would be some special extraordinary cases for, like, a lot of these rules or timelines not applying for? And then I want to ask you, like, who is your information, like, generally applicable to after we conquer who it's not for? Yeah, sure.

So, honestly, I'm not a huge fan of just complying with the age aspect of things. I think there's a lot of other factors. that come into play that are more important when it comes to deciding when is the right time to start potty training. The age thing is obviously a good guideline. But, you know, there's certain signs of readiness that we want to look for in your child before actually starting the process. We need, you know, certain signs of physiological readiness, biological readiness, biological readiness, emotional readiness, social readiness. So there's a lot of things that, you know, might need to be in place that you don't necessarily see with your new two-year-old yet, that would,

you know, that would kind of guide you to wait a little longer before starting potty training. Also, you know, if you have other events happening in your life that would make starting potty training even more stressful than it needs to be, you know, like if you're having a new baby around the same time your child's turning to, or if you're moving to a new house, or if your child's just starting school for the first time obviously we don't want to throw too many changes on a two-year-old all at one time so in some of those cases too it also makes more sense to just kind of wait so I don't want parents to hear that two-year age window and be like oh my gosh we totally missed the mark like our child's two and a half our child's three our child's three

and a half we haven't started yet we've totally screwed up and and that's not the at all. So a lot of times it just has to be like a family decision and what feels right as the family because a lot of it is also about the parents readiness too. And I think that's something that we kind of downplay. You always hear about signs of readiness for the child, but you have to be ready too because you're doing most of the work in all honesty. Like you have to be prepared as your child's teacher and coach to help them learn this skill. And if that, you know, all happening right around the same time, then it's going to be that much more difficult. So in some cases, it does just make more sense to start either earlier or later,

whatever fits well into your family's timeline. And the course applies to anybody. It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, somebody that's a parent of a new two-year-old. It can work for a parent with an 18-month-old that wants to start learning how to potty train. It can work with a parent who has a four-and-a-half-year-old who is struggling to use the potty, So there's a lot of my strategies and techniques and approaches to the process can be applied across all age groups and all different personality types too. That's great.

So your course is about $35 and there's another like bundle that you can get that has all the educational and background information as well. And it has literally scripts that you could talk to your kid with verbatim so that you're encouraging and keeping them on the right track. It has an equipment list that you'll need, like the little training potty's, a list of... Which changed the game for us. Hugely. We found the right one that Drew loved. Yes, the little pink one that like folds. Yeah, yeah, I love that one.

Drew, that's her favorite one. It's so cool because it gives her a little bit of independence to, like, be able to do it herself. Oh, she's in the phase now where she doesn't let us come in the bathroom. She closes a door the whole thing. It's like,

yeah. She says she needs her space. Oh, my goodness. She's too much. And then it has like calendars and sticker charts and the whole thing. So if you are listening and have a kid who's approaching the age of two-ish or or not that age, but you're in the potty training process.

Or if you're a new mom or like anything. I would just, people try to buy like potty training books that you would spend 30 bucks on. I would buy this. Yeah. We'll link information on that down below. Potty Training 101. Thank you, Alison. And you also, speaking of books, have written three yourself.

Is that right? I have, yes. I have two children's books and one parent guide. Super proud of those, especially my, my newest book because pooping on the potty is one of the biggest challenges that parents. encounter during the potty training process and there just aren't there's not a ton of like children's literature out there kind of addressing that and uh so i decided to write my own book about it and i've always loved writing so being able to have my own books has been like a dream come true it's been so cool wow they're they're illustrated and everything i love that yeah i think that's actually how we first

connected was she said you were so kind to send us a book thank you oh yeah that's right yep i did what is your favorite thing about what you do oh gosh my favorite thing is getting text messages from parents who had been previously struggling with potty training and they're like oh my god she pooped in the potty or like just being able to like celebrate those small wins I think that as parents we never expected to struggle with and then we realized like oh my gosh this is really hard and then they reach out to me and I don't know I really like to develop like a relationship, a friendship with the families that I help and just being there to kind of cheerlead them through the process and to get to share in those small wins that you're not

necessarily going to call up like, you know, your local mom group and be like, my kid pooped in the potty today. Like it's just, you know, it's kind of like that little personal connection. And just being able to help so many people has been such a fulfilling experience, I think, way more than any other career path I could have chosen. So it's been awesome. Dude, she's been featured on like Good Morning America, Moms.com. Like all the, you're like big time, Alice. And so we're grateful.

Thank you for joining us on the show and talking to us about this subject. Thank you for helping us, body training our oldest and eventually our second. And then I also just appreciate your encouraging approach. Like I feel like there are some hardline, like, you know, just get it done. and I just I love your perspective on this issue and anyway thank you for sharing it with this no thank you guys it's been a pleasure awesome and again we will link information on the course down below for those listening that want to learn more and also Allison put out some awesome social content so we'll link information to our Instagram etc in the description but that's all we got

Allison thank you so much it's it was a pleasure we'll be in touch all right thank you guys bye bye thank you