 it's really convenient to just pee whenever you want to on a diaper. It is a complete mindset change for a kid to say, oh I can't go whenever I want to but there are ways to make it easier. Keep watching to find out what books we read to help potty train our toddler. It's Kyla Denigno and you're watching Kyla's reading day special edition because we are reviewing toddler books that are all about potty training and using the potty. So potty training is what Americans say when they are teaching their kid to stop using a diaper and start using a toilet. Potty I guess is just a cute little phrase. Kids are able to pronounce it potty training. I want to go potty whatever. So we're going to go through books that we read to the little one to get them ready for potty training. And then one book that I read as a parent to prepare me and my husband for potty training. So the first one is a book that we actually own. We bought this back when she was 18 months old because I was ready for her to potty train. I was like you know what diapers are done let's go. Well she understood what a diaper was but I don't think she was ready and I think it would have been a lot more difficult for us and that was something again that we credit to the actively family video which is where they say your kid has to acknowledge the things you're saying for them to do it. Yeah she knew words and she understood things at 18 months but if we asked her tell me when you gotta go potty that didn't mean anything to her. So whether or not she understood it she loves the sounds right. So there's a little song that goes along with it. There's a sound of a toilet flushing and then there's washing your hands. So this book is really cute because it talks about hey we're going to different places we're going to school we're going to the music store every place has potties so if you need to go there's one for you anywhere. So then potty by Leslie Patricelli is a really cute book and she loved to read this book okay. So I'm going to show you one of her favorite pages which was this one where the kid is squirming and wiggling because they gotta go. She really resonated with this like she's old enough that she recognizes facial expressions and angry and happy and whatever and I'm sure she's looking at it like oh yeah I felt like that right. So this one was a really fun read and she really enjoyed it. So I wasn't sure about this one I used the potty by Maria van Leswold and sorry if I'm mispronouncing that and so this book was great because it talks a lot about pooping and so potty changing the first wasn't nearly as messy but that's because I was listening to an audiobook and I was like okay tell me when you gotta go potty tell me you gotta go potty. I had forgotten how much I needed to pay attention for her to have to go right. We were increasing the fluids let's go let's do it sure. By day two that was when she really realized oh I'm going and or her body was sufficiently hydrated from the day before but the second day was tough but also she had that poop so it was nice that she got to see that in a book acknowledge it look at it right because pooping is difficult if you've never done it before in a toilet and I know that sounds so weird you're watching this video you've probably been pooping in a toilet forever but it's really convenient to just pee whenever you want to on a diaper it is a complete mindset change for a kid to say oh I can't go whenever I want to it's a complete difference okay and so this next book really helped with that and that book is a potty for me by Karen Katz okay but this one is good because it shows accidents so the first day we got away with pants in the top but also I think the first day was so difficult because she couldn't really tell when she was wet in the pants right her underwear was absorbing it the pants were absorbing it and then we'd be like hey can you tell you're wet and she's kind of like she probably mostly just felt warm so she wasn't getting it in the pants and I was like what can we do for the next day a skirt I'll put you in a skirt I'm gonna put this picture up here only my kiddo would say well now that I'm in a skirt I gotta wear shoes and if I'm going to wear shoes I gotta wear socks this is why the second day was so difficult in my household this is what she was wearing this is a whole outfit which means every time she'd pee we would run her to the potty she'd probably have urine on her skirt wouldn't want to take it off so we were constantly changing her clothes she wore three different two twos that day and more than five different socks also went through about 20 undies because she did not like being wet once she realized oh that's what's happening she was telling us either she was screaming potty and run into the bathroom or she would realize she was going right like I had to learn her cues but then she I don't care if it was too dry she did not want to be wet but she was in a whole outfit and so this book was really good for showing accidents happen you know now for my kid the wet pants didn't work but the accidents when she was wearing the skirt and she could actually feel it then she was like okay no this is not gonna work the next book here is a fun one because the kid I love Sesame Street and she really likes Elmo and she still really likes flip books so this one was fun because it shows Elmo at a friend's house but it kind of looks like a school and it shows the kid getting changed and then it eventually shows them like oh I think I have to go so this one doesn't have all the lessons that the other books have but it was still just a good one because we were trying to get her to acknowledge that everyone potties even fictional monsters on Sesame Street everyone potties okay so the very last one here which was really important for our family time to use the potty by Fiona Monroe was really really really cute for my kiddo okay for one the characters in the book are brown it's always nice to have some representation but also both of the characters the little girl and her brother have favorite dogs and stuffed animals and they try to make them sit on the potty so my little girl has a stuffed lamb that she absolutely loves and carries with her everywhere we didn't do this where we were like oh look my mind has to go potty as well but when we're reading this and they're like oh let me try to get the stuffed bear to try to go use the bathroom oh let me try to get the stuffed bear to wear it on these that I think really resonated with her because she's like yeah potty potty if I potty my mic and potty everybody potties so I really like to see this this was a really good book because the scariest thing about potty training is that you have to get your kid to acknowledge that everyone goes right she calls it make yellow so we get up in the morning and she goes to the bathroom and she goes make yellow I made yellow but then also even when she had to go poop we had to make sure we said oh look your body works we were very careful to not say yucky or oh it smells and I think one time she said yucky yucky and we were like no your body works look your body works so that she can get used to the smells of being in the bathroom the looks of being in the bathroom right I don't want her to have shame about oh no this thing is happening because you're gonna eat food and it's gonna come out so we got to get you to acknowledge that all right so in addition to those books that we were reading we are still reading some just fun books from the library and we are still enforcing food and fruits and eating so fruits with suits is really cute it talks about how fruits wear all kinds of different suits they wear swimsuits they wear suits when they're going to work they wear bathing well bathing suit is a swimsuit and then lastly and this one was a surprise for us pigeon finds a hotdog and the best thing about this is that in the back of the book the pigeon shares the hotdog so this one is still getting the kiddo to try her food try foods that might be on my plate try some veggies because food has water in it that makes you have to urinate food has fiber in it that makes you need to go so you need to eat food in order to use the potty so we definitely had to kick that up now last summer we started saying okay you're wearing a diaper do you realize this oh are you wet those kind of things and then once she got into daycare in september she definitely started going to the teachers and telling them diaper diaper diaper which was her way of saying wet or give me another diaper right but then once we really knew it was time for her to be potty trained was in november all of the reports we would receive from daycare they would change her maybe five times in eight hours she'd be there and three of the diapers were dry so i don't believe that they were truly dry like they weren't pressing their hand to check but the diapers weren't wet enough to indicate the wet line on them and i'm like okay we're just wasting money by sending her in diapers so that was why we wanted to potty train her for Thanksgiving break but we did save it into a Christmas break when we knew we were going to have eight days with her by herself okay so we watched that one three-day method actually worked but i'm also happy that we read this book the first time parents guide for potty training so this book really helped to prepare us because as you're potty training your kid you need to make sure that they are drinking a lot more fluids than usual right my daughter loves to have some chocolate milk she enjoys water she enjoys fruit smoothies but you've got to kick that up for potty training because you need their bladder to always be full so that they can always get those cues and those triggers oh i have to go and so we've always been making smoothies but we definitely heighten those and then when we had leftover smoothie we turned them into popsicles so that she could just walk around all day eating those we also bought some just regular generic brand you know orange purple and red popsicles that she could walk around snacking on because the kiddo got tired of drinking right here's some orange juice here's some water here oh look she got tired of it and another good thing in this book is it recommends salty foods for your kids to eat so it's a common thing when you go to a bar that they have peanuts they are pretzels so that you're eating and then you want to drink and it's the same for potty training not the beer but we were offering her pretzels we were offering her goldfish crackers right all of these things that'll make your kid go thirsty and then they start drinking even more and then they constantly are getting those cues okay there was another important thing here which was talking about naked days so we considered that i was like great we can have a naked day she can run around just be messy we'll clean that up well that doesn't fit our family and my daughter taught me that because she's used to getting up getting dressed going on with her day so the idea of we're going to put a t-shirt on you in no bottoms she wasn't having that the idea of okay we're not going to put on pans we'll just put on your undies she wasn't having that either okay so she had to teach us everything you read in the book is cute but it's not gonna work for me and that was perfectly fine right the point of this book is just that you have to prepare yourself for what potty training is like because it is messy and it is tough and it is dirty like literally dirty and if you are not mentally prepared you will be fussing at your kid you will be yelling at them why do you have an accident why can't you just go in the potty but that's not going to make them go okay so we did watch this video which was called the three-day potty training method which was by actively family i'll make sure i put that link in the show notes that video was absolutely great but there was one thing about the video that we made sure that we did not do and that was just a personal preference for us and our family and that's because my daughter does not like candy so we bought a little potty chart back when we thought we were going to potty train her when she was 18 months old we lost it and so we were like okay well that's not gonna work and then we knew we couldn't use the candy as the motivation so we were like okay we can't do that so one of the things we learned from this book was that you could just use support and acknowledgement of the goals that your kid was reaching to support them and encourage them so if madison went poop in the potty we would call her grandma and we would let her say oh my god i'm so proud of you you're such a big girl or when she would have no accidents all day we would call her aunt and we would be like hey guess what i didn't have any accidents and they she would get to feel that love and praise over the phone and another perk to that was that then we didn't have to break her from always wanting a treat whenever she went potty but yeah so this book was really really important and good to get us prepared for potty training because it's very difficult you're constantly paying attention to them to be like are they squirming do they gotta go are they making a little face to say oh i gotta go right like it does take time it does take time but you can do it we did it in three days and we also spent about a month reading books to get prepared and get prepped for what is going potty okay so thank you so much for hanging out with me and watching this video leave me a comment let me know if you enjoyed the book suggestions and let me know if you potty trained a kid and how that worked out for you all right and i will talk to you next time on kyla's reading day bye