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Toilet Training Twins or Triplets
Tips for Teaching Multiples to Use the Potty By Gwen Morrison
With two or three toddlers to wrestle into diapers, it's no wonder parents of multiples yearn for diaper-free days! But when do you begin the daunting task of toilet training more than one child?
Mathews decided to potty train her twins the summer after their second birthday. She read them books about kids using the potty and showed them a video about potty training. "They liked having their 'own' potty," she says. "I tried helping them sit on the potty every two hours, but it was definitely 'hit or miss' as far as them actually using it."
After about three months of consistent teaching, Mathews says her daughter seemed to catch on to the potty training concept. "I would say, however, that she wasn't fully trained until around her third birthday," she says. "My son, Mitchell, was a different story. I was hoping that once he saw Madeline using the toilet, he would follow suit, but that was not the case. I tried all the 'tricks.' I rewarded him with candy every time he used the potty; I took him to the store and let him pick out his own underwear; I threatened him with not being able to go to preschool and a number of other tactics that only increased my frustration level."
It was during his 3-year-old checkup that Mathews brought up her frustration about her son's lack of toilet training progress. The pediatrician suggested Mathews take a step back from the training, put her son back in training pants and give it some time. "One morning, Mitchell woke up and said he needed to go potty," says Mathews. "He went into the bathroom, used the toilet, and he's never had another accident since."
Mathews says her experience confirmed what experts have been saying all along: Every child is different. Every child needs to learn at his own pace and not every training technique will work on every child, whether they are twins or singletons. "Like everything else I did with my twins, I felt that if I didn't train them both at the same time, with the same technique, I would be 'off schedule,'" says Mathews. "Potty training was totally different than eating, sleeping and changing diapers. They each needed to start showing their independence, and they needed to do it their own way on their own timeline."
