Hi, I’m Dana, welcome to this week’s video.

Today, I wanna talk about nighttime potty training. Now, if your child is daytime potty trained then consider that a victory. That is by far one of the hardest things that some people do is training their children how to use the bathroom during the day.

So take a break, right? Take a breather from it. Nighttime potty training comes later and for some kids, a lot later and it has more to do with their biology than anything else. So here’s some tips to look for if you think your child is ready to nighttime potty train and a few dos and don’ts around it.

One good rule of thumb is that they start having a dry diaper or pull-up in the morning. That’s a great sign. He’s able to control his bladder through the night without waking up and that’s important. If that happens even a night or two then I would say go ahead and try just underwear and see what happens.

Now, be ready. Have sheets on standby, clean jammies right there so that if there is an accident, it’s not the end of the world. You just clean it up quickly and move on with the night. You might even consider putting down a plastic pad over the mattress just in case an accident or two happens.

One thing I don’t want you to do is wake up a child in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom neither do I want a child waking up in the middle of the night to go to a bathroom. If they have to do that, if they can’t make it through the night without that then they’re not ready, okay? Go back to pull-ups because what you’re doing in an attempt to be successful in one area, potty training, you’re becoming very unsuccessful in another area which is sleep and if I had to pick between sleep and nighttime potty training, sleep is winning by a mile because I don’t wanna fragment their night, right?

Any little fragment in your night where you have to actually get up out of bed and go do something, it ruins the quality of your nighttime sleep and our goal for every child is that they just beautifully transition from one sleep cycle to another having little, tiny brief wake-ups but nothing that’s of consequence and just a beautiful night sleep.

So you getting her up in the middle of the night or her getting up in the middle of the night, not okay. Go back, she is not ready. Success in the night means being able to hold it all the way through the night until morning and if your child’s not ready for that then it’s no big deal.

Honestly, it’s just signals and biology and deep sleep and all these things have to kind of come together in this perfect storm for a child to be ready. Now, one last little tip though. For some kids, they are never gonna have a dry pull-up. It feels that way, right? I can remember one of my children. He just kept having a wet pull-up. He was getting to the four, he was in the fours and I finally had to say, I’m pretty sure he’s just lazy. I think he can do it, he just doesn’t want to.

So then I would try. I would say, you know what, for the next week, we’re going diaper free. No pull-up, right into underwear. Again, being ready with standby sheets and jammies just in case to see if in a week’s time, he could start making it through the night without a wet jammy. I would put a little reward incentive in place too just really casual, no extra pressure around it, just if he can have a dry jammy in the morning then there’ll be a little reward at the beginning of your day and by the end of the week he was doing it.

He just needed a little push. He was kinda lazy about it and he didn’t mind having a wet pull-up so we had to nudge him a little bit but if in that week’s time, by the end of the week, he wasn’t able, he was still having wet jammies and accidents then that tells me he’s not ready and I just take my foot off and let it lie.

Okay, so it’s really okay if your child’s not ready to nighttime potty train. Thanks so much for watching today. Sleep well.