When my daughters graduated to ‘big-girl’ underpants, I dreaded the idea of stumbling into their room in the middle of the night to strip off soggy sheets and tinky-soaked jammies. It’s a pain to change the sheets on a toddler bed in broad daylight when you are well rested. Add darkness, sleep deprivation, and an upset toddler to the mix and you have a recipe for stubbed toes and banged-up shins.

I did a little research and came up with a better plan…

Since a few night time potty accidents are bound to happen, I looked for the fastest and easiest solution I could find for changing a bed sheet. My first ah-ha moment came when I realized that I really didn’t need to protect the whole mattress, just the middle area. The head and foot of the mattress were well out of harm’s way. Instead of changing the whole bed every time, I decided to add a second set of quick-change waterproof bed sheets to the middle of the mattress.

You can purchase waterproof bed sheets and there are people on the web who sell patterns for quilting your own potty training sheets with a waterproof backing. But if you use a 3 day potty training approach (like we did), you really only need the sheets for a few days. It’s not enough to justify spending a lot of time or money on the sheets. You just need something absorbent for the top and waterproof for the bottom…

…my solution, thick bath towels and a cut up vinyl table cloth with a felt backing.

We laid out a table cloth cutout and covered it with one of the bath towels. The whole thing was folded with the table cloth part on the outside so that we could set it in the center of the bed and the whole package would unfold in place and only need to be tucked in on the sides.

Each night we kept a small stack of these sheets packs in the bedroom and placed a fresh one across the middle of the bed – prime tinkle territory.

When an accident happened, I snatched up my girl, stripped off her wet clothes, and set her on the potty. Then I quickly stripped the potty sheet of the bed, grabbed a fresh set, popped it on the middle of the mattress, flipped it open, and tucked in the sides.

It’s a simple solution that handled the situation with minimal trauma and let everyone get back to sleep quickly.

Tinkle Time Re-Usable Potty Training Stickers are placed inside the potty. Under normal conditions, the sticker is black and no image is visible, but when your toddler tinkles in the potty, the heat from their tinkle makes an image appear on the sticker.

When my daughter started potty training, we gave her reward stickers whenever she sat on the potty, to encourage her to sit… but she wasn’t using the potty. But, when we added the stickers inside the potty, it became a game for her. Our stickers were pictures of farm animals and she would jump up after going tinkle and say, “I can see the piggy.”

The amazing thing was how fast she switched from just sitting there to actively trying to go tinkle. It happened as soon as we put the sticker in the potty.

We also re-enforced her success with reward stickers as well – one for tinkies and two for poo-poos.

If your toddler is sitting on the potty regularly, but won’t actually go to the bathroom,  take a look at Tinkle Time Re-Usable Potty Training Stickers. They might just be the thing to jumpstart the process.

Kids love to be read to, and they love watching videos – especially videos with favorite characters. Luckily, there are all sort of these on the market ready for you and your child to enjoy – together!

Potty Training Videos

Let’s face it: kids are just captivated by videos. So when it’s potty time in your household, it makes sense to show a video about potty training. You may find that once you introduce a video to them, they won’t be able to get enough of it – even after they’ve mastered the potty!

Potty training videos work because they show real-life children or animated characters using the potty. They may also feature catchy, sing-along tunes. This type of entertainment can improve learning and help your child make the transition from diapers to the potty more quickly.

Does your child love to watch the same videos over and over again? Little Conner does! At this point, his parents can pretty much recite dialogue word-for-word right along with Marlin and Dorie in “Finding Nemo” and have ceased to get surprised anymore when Oscar slays the sharks in “Shark Tale”.

But this actually isn’t a bad thing! The more children watch a video, the more they repeat the actions and words from it. Little Conner is constantly spouting lines from favorite movies. It naturally follows, then, that when children watch a video about potty training, they are more likely to put into practice those behaviors that will help them overcome this difficult milestone in their development.

Just make sure to step out of the way when your child runs to the bathroom and says, “I want to go potty!”

Here are a few suggestions for you to look for when finding potty videos for your child:

• Potty Power
• I Can Go Potty!
• Once Upon a Potty For Him
• Once Upon a Potty For Her
• Bear In The Big Blue House – Potty Time With Bear
• Winston’s Potty Chair
• Let’s Go Potty

Even though we are in the DVD age right now, some of these titles may only be available in VHS, so break out that old VCR and hook it up to your TV.

Potty Training Books

Most children are fascinated with the printed word – especially when those words are accompanied by colorful pictures. Most children also love to be read to. If this isn’t a regular part of your routine, you should really try to start.

The advantage to books over videos when potty training is that books can be read WHILE the child is sitting on the potty. Many, many adults like to read while “doing their business”, it only makes sense that your child would like to do the same. Even if they can’t read yet, they can look at the pictures while you read the words!

Following are some of the potty training books we’ve found to be especially helpful – and fun:

• Once Upon a Potty For Him
• Once Upon a Potty For Her
• Too Big For Diapers (featuring Sesame Street characters)
• The Potty Book for Boys
• The Potty Book for Girls
• A Potty for Me
• It’s Potty Time
• Toddler’s Potty Book
• What Do You Do With a Potty?
• My Potty Book
• Dora’s Potty Book (featuring Dora the Explorer)
• A Baby’s Got to Go (featuring The Rugrats)

Since we’re talking about tools that will help you during potty training, choosing the right potty chair can be a pretty big ordeal too!