It is a bit of a relief when your child toilets train and stops warming cloth nappies. Many people have said that when their child stops wearing cloth nappies, they are still washing as much as they were before. Kids are messy, but at least your nappy-changing days are over for this child.
Transcription: What you need to toilet train a child
00:00:00 Andrew: How you doing Vashti?
00:00:22 Vashti: I'm good, Andrew. How are you?
00:00:23 Andrew: I'm doing fine. And I wrote that down this time.
00:00:26 Vashti: You Ah, see you learned from the last episode
00:00:31 Andrew: because it's the, I think it's the same thing I say every time.
00:00:34 Vashti: Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.
00:00:36 Andrew: So we're continuing our discussion why do cloth nappy kids toilet train faster?
What do you need, what do you need to toilet train a child?
00:00:43 Vashti: I think you just need some time is the main thing,
but one-on-one time?
Yeah, A little bit of one-on-one time. If you're taking a few days off work or something like that. , some kids will toilet train quicker. If you can do it intensely for a few days.
Other kids, it's not always feasible for you to take time off work or to have some dedicated time towards it. Like many families are both working. and they need to work to support the family and stuff like that. So being,
00:01:22 Andrew: unless you set us, if you're working, both working during the week, chances are you've got the weekend off and you can, you could dedicate a week or a couple weekends to it. You
00:01:30 Vashti: can. It's generally, we generally recommend at least a week. So there is a book now, I can't remember the name of it, Jenna Sswearby it. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it anyway. But there, look, there's plenty of books out there on toilet training and stuff like that.
Follow your gut though, like you don't need to read a book on how to toilet train your child. I never did. It was that we did have a little board book that we read with the kids and that sort of talked about how to go to the toilet and stuff like that, and they could read it by themselves and it had pictures.
Sitting on the potty and pictures of toilet paper and things like that. Having a potty around the house and even if they're not using it, letting them play with it. Don't let them play with it once
they've used it,
because it's not hygienic
00:02:27 Andrew: Yeah, no but,
00:02:29 Vashti: having a potty around the house just for them to be aware of having that potty sitting next to the toilet.
00:02:36 Andrew: When, like our girls and boy didn't really use the potty. They preferred the toilet and I think it's because, they never saw mommy and daddy using the You know why they have to use the potty? I wanna the big toilet.
00:02:48 Vashti: And that was it. Like we had potties. We had a potty. It wasn't, we didn't have multiple, we had a potty because everybody told me with my first, oh no, you need a potty, you need a potty.
and it's it just ended up being something for them to drag around the house and gather dust
they never ever used it as an actual toilet. Lots of families will have it next to the bath and when they first start toilet training, they'll get them to sit on the potty before they get in the bath or something like that. that's a good one.
00:03:20 Andrew: Because. Peeing into the water. It was a terrible thing. Like I remember I was filling up the bath and I, I pop Gabriel and he stands up and he whe and then he sits down
00:03:32 Vashti: Yep.
00:03:33 Andrew: That's no good little guy. I gotta outta the bath. I gotta change the water now,
00:03:39 Vashti: until they poo in the bath.
00:03:41 Andrew: Oh, I never had
00:03:42 Vashti: Yeah. No, we did
00:03:43 Andrew: I've seen it in a public pool. I've never seen it A potty
00:03:47 Vashti: Yeah. so A
potty. Even just having it there so that when you go to the toilet, like we were talking about before, when they start showing an interest in what you are doing on the toilet you go to the toilet and say I'm doing a wee on the toilet.
Can you do a wee on your potty? And getting them to sit down on the potty next to you while you are doing a wei toilet and
stuff.
00:04:07 Andrew: My toilet's not
big enough for that.
00:04:08 Vashti: No,
yours is
00:04:11 Andrew: Really, actually. Oh. Even our en suite with the toilet and it does not, yeah it's, yeah.
Gotta have a luxury house for that.
00:04:19 Vashti: oh, look, we, yeah, we tended to do it in the en.
And there was enough room for us to have the potty there and it was like a bit of a shuffle round and stuff, but you could also just have it have the door open to the toilet if there's no one else in the house. Or if you have an open door policy in your house and but no, look, my kids weren't potty people.
They much preferred the toilet. And so we had little Ikea. The little IKEA steps that you can get. Yeah. so like the step stools and we had those next to the
toilet.
those.
Yeah, we've
still got them. We use them
00:05:00 Andrew: now. I remember why we originally bought them. Yeah. Cuz it used to just sit next to the toilet.
00:05:04 Vashti: Yeah. I didn't like those ladder seats. That had I just didn't like those,
but some other people
00:05:12 Andrew: did. Yeah. We had the leather seat. The leather seat was cool.
Like you, . And you teach 'em how to put it up too, so they could, just put it up and then just. And it made it easier for the girls to be able to get onto the toilet too. Yeah. Because they could walk up the steps. And same with Gabriel, then he could stand on the top step and we, but so yeah I swear by those, they were great for us.
The kids really adopted
00:05:37 Vashti: I
didn't like them
00:05:38 Andrew: well, I frankly didn't want to clean out a potty,
00:05:41 Vashti: Yeah, true. But
We had the step stools and the step stools worked for us.
So I think it, it's about finding what works for your family, but. You can just pick your child up and put them on the toilet as well, but that means you've gotta be with them all the time, you are until they're towards the end of
00:06:00 Andrew: their toilet. But you've doing doing that for years
though.
00:06:02 Vashti: Yeah,
00:06:03 Andrew: wanna make 'em independent? Yeah,
00:06:05 Vashti: But having a seat for your toilet. If you are using your toilet, like the adult toilet, having a seat for your toilet that can go over the current toilet seat. Or having the family seats, you can get them, like when you go to the family rooms, they have the smaller toilet seats that you can get.
So at Bunnings you can actually get a family seat, which has the kids seat and the adult seat all in.
thing.
Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So you lift the kids' seat up and you have the adult seat there, and then when the kids wanna come in, they just pull the kids' seat down and it sits over the top of the adult
00:06:41 Andrew: Damn.
00:06:41 Vashti: seats. It's awesome. But I had the toilet seats that you put over the top. And now can I just don't get the cushy foam ones. Just don't go there. It's gross because we get all into the trim of it. Soaks into even though they're plastic coated and everything, it soaks into the stitch lines and it's just foul.
So it doesn't matter how cushy that you think this. Beautiful brightly colored, character, toilet seat ears, just don't do it. Just get the molded plastic ones.
00:07:16 Andrew: Yeah. Quite frankly if the seat is comfortable, they're gonna stay there longer.
00:07:21 Vashti: which actually, there will be times where during toilet training, where they will be sitting there for a while and it's so having a comfy seat isn't a bad thing, but the molded plastic is so much easier because if they. you know when they are getting to that point where they're trying to wipe their own bottom or you say, okay, I'll be back in a second to wipe your bottom. And they're like, no, we're finished. And they get off and smear poo all over it.
or boys. let's.
Yeah. . Yeah, in the little squirts.
Good. But I used to just pick up the molded one and put it in the shower . um So yeah. But no a seat that, gives them a smaller area to sit on, so it's more comfortable for them on the toilet.
00:08:07 Andrew: We haven't talked about the wee man yet, have we?
00:08:09 The Weeman
00:08:09 Vashti: No. So the Weeman,
00:08:11 Andrew: I think we had one of those at one stage for
00:08:13 Vashti: Yeah, we had one. I thought it was a little bit of a gimmicky thing but we got it for Brave at an expo more because, his father wanted to teach him how to whee standing up and it's that doesn't actually work at first because boys, when they first toilet training don't stand up.
They sit down 99% of the time. It's not until they're preschool age that they start standing up to. Wee.
In those first couple of years they're sitting down all the time, . And so it's about teaching them to point their penis down as well, because little boys, when they have wee, their penis stands up if you haven't already worked that out it's, it.
00:08:55 Andrew: You can just imagine the hose That's turned on full and is flapping around Prince .
00:08:59 Vashti: And little boys, gotta
get them, you've gotta say, when they sit down on the toilet, okay, put your penis down
and gotta hold it down sometimes.
00:09:07 Andrew: even when they're standing up, you gotta tell
00:09:09 Vashti: Yeah.
to hold it,
00:09:11 Andrew: hold it and point it.
00:09:11 Vashti: Yeah. So the Weeman is it's a molded plastic.
and it clips onto the side of your toilet and it's like a urinal. So it brings the toilet down to a height that they can reach so they can stand up to wee. And then once they've done their, we, you flip this up into the toilet and it's molded so that the, wee then runs into the toilet and it's, and then you flush the toilet.
And when you flush the water cleans out the wee man. it? Yeah.
00:09:43 Andrew: Oh, we mustn't have had a wee man because the one we had to wash separately because you tit bit into the toilet and then it went back. didn't actually stay in the
00:09:53 Vashti: No. Ours, the wee man that we had, which it was.
Labeled the Weeman.
So w double e m a n. It's it actually flipped into the bowl so that you could flush the toilet and it flushed out the Weeman
which was really good. And so I loved it. It was actually pretty nifty.
00:10:15 Andrew: God,
00:10:16 Vashti: I gave
00:10:16 Andrew: must have been a cheap imitation.
00:10:18 Vashti: I gave it to a friend who had a little boy cuz brath had toilet trained.
And, I wasn't gonna need it for Mikayla. And Broth was old enough that.
Stand on the stool and wee straight into the toilet. And a friend of mine had a little boy who was coming up to toilet training, so we gave it to her and I considered getting one for Carlin and then I went, ah, can't be bothered. can just use the real toilet.
00:10:39 Andrew: You couldn't get it back?
00:10:40 Vashti: No. They'd moved and we'd moved so
00:10:43 Andrew: okay. contact with them.
00:10:45 Vashti: no. Still have contact with them, but they were in a different state. They'd moved to a
State.
00:10:49 Andrew: Yeah. you've moved all over the damn
00:10:51 Vashti: country, I have,
00:10:52 Andrew: I've only, been in Brisbane nearly my whole life actually.
No, actually I've lived in Brisbane my whole life. I have never lived anywhere else.
00:11:00 Vashti: Yeah. I've never lived in Western Australia, south Australia or Tasmania or a c t, but I've lived in Victoria, new South Wales and Queensland and nt
00:11:10 Andrew: Okay. I've lived to qualify that
00:11:13 Vashti: places.
00:11:14 Andrew: I was a kid I moved around and I was born in New South Wales.
Yeah. But when I became an. Yeah, Brisbane.
00:11:22 Vashti: So when we were, once we had kids, we did move down to Victoria for a couple of years, not long after both was born, but then yeah, came back to Brisbane and I'm not moving
00:11:32 Andrew: Yeah,
00:11:32 Vashti: This is where I'll die
00:11:34 Andrew: Brisbane's cool. I love Brisbane
00:11:36 Ping Pong Balls
00:11:36 Vashti: So yeah. So the wee man's great. Another thing that's really awesome if you've got little boys is ping pong balls
00:11:44 Andrew: really ping pong ball.
00:11:45 Vashti: Ping pong balls.
So
00:11:47 Andrew: do you put it in their pants?
00:11:48 Vashti: You threw it in the toilet and you to aim for it.
Now a ping pong ball doesn't flush.
It floats. Even when you flush the toilet, it won't go down. It stays up the top because it's so light. And so some of we've drawn faces on ping pong balls, we've got things like ping pong balls that have little designs on them and things like, And you throw 'em in the toilet and you, when you're teaching them to stand up to where you get them to aim at the ping pong ball and to chase the ping pong ball around the toilet, and that way they keep their wee in the toilet and not all over the edge of the toilet and the floor
00:12:28 Andrew: Yeah. And we just hope that they don't take a ping pong ball and put it on the floor.
00:12:32 Vashti: Yeah, there is , but yeah, ping pong balls. They're great for toilet training. Little and big boys alike
00:12:38 Andrew: Okay, that's good.
00:12:40 Vashti: So yeah, so that's another really good thing for toilet training. And then cloth wipes, if you've been using cloth wipes for your nappies, there's no reason why you have to stop once they toilet train.
Plenty of families use family cloth even if you're just using cloth wipes in the toilet for your kids. It's a really nice transition because they've been used to that. Feeling of the cloth wipes in their nappies. And in toilet paper, even if you get the super soft toilet paper, it is still
00:13:09 Andrew: dry paper.
00:13:10 Vashti: It's dry paper. So having a stash of cloth wipes in the bathroom, and you can have those little swing top bins and you have a little stash of cloth wipes and the dirty wipe goes into the swing top bin. And then when you're ready to do a. Every couple of days you just pull 'em out and throw 'em in for your pre-wash and then top it up with any other, towels or stuff around the house,
00:13:36 Andrew: off subject. Some countries that I've been to. You don't put the toilet paper in the
00:13:41 Vashti: No, you don't.
00:13:42 Andrew: You wipe and then you put it in the bin next to the toilet because they're
00:13:47 Vashti: their sewage doesn't cope with paper.
00:13:48 Andrew: No sewage doesn't cope with paper. And I didn't cope with that .
00:13:52 Vashti: cope with
that either when we were in China.
so
00:13:55 Andrew: I was I experienced it when I was in Mexico. And I'm in a five star hotel
00:14:00 Vashti: and you still have to put the toilet paper in the bin next to the
toilet.
00:14:03 Andrew: It's oh, I just, because I thought, no, that's gonna stick the place up.
00:14:06 Vashti: It's oh.
00:14:07 Andrew: like,
oh So
00:14:08 Vashti: That's the way they do it.
00:14:10 Andrew: So I actually that's where the habit is. I got into the habit of never doing number twos in the hotel room. I always used to go out to the public toilets To do numbers twos, because I thought, yeah, I'm not gonna stick up my off, , I go and stink up out there.
I just got into the habit of, yeah. And even when I'm going on holidays with, Same thing. I just go out in the morning and come
00:14:33 Vashti: Wow.
00:14:34 Andrew: And know,
00:14:36 Vashti: see Brace on the other hand, he will not poop outside the.
00:14:41 Andrew: Oh really? Wow.
00:14:42 Vashti: Sometimes when I pick him up in the afternoon from school and I'm like, he'll kill me if he ever hears this but pick him up in the afternoon from school. He's gotta go. And I'm like, what's wrong?
And he goes, hurry up, get me home. Get me home. And I'm like, what's the matter? He goes, I need to Poo
00:14:58 Andrew: And
00:14:58 Vashti: think part of that has come about from when he was in grade seven, I think it was. Don't ask me why, but some child did a poo in the basin, in the school toilets, and he walked in and found it. And he has never used the school toilet
00:15:14 Andrew: It sounds like he needs to therapy. Yeah. ,
00:15:17 Vashti: just,
it's we've tried to talk about it, but he just will not use the school toilets. And it's no worries. And so he. He will try and time his poos for the morning before school, but sometimes it doesn't always happen. Obviously our bodies function differently.
00:15:33 Andrew: I must admit. I like to come home. I don't like to, while I'm out the power. Unless I I like to be comfortable in my own house usually because my iPad's, thanks to the toilet
that's
really
00:15:47 Vashti: on hygienic. Andrew
00:15:49 Andrew: No, I clean it every now and again.
And it never is a toilet. It's, there's a charger there.
00:15:55 Vashti: Oh, there you go.
00:15:56 Andrew: It's, I have a, I have an iPad for the toilet. I'm know I'm the pinnacle of technology. I have an iPad for
00:16:02 Vashti: oh my God.
00:16:03 Andrew: it's it's it's the, the Hemi down. It's been through three owners before it got to me through the family.
Kids got it and then it got hand handed to the next kid, and then it's just got handed onto me because I, didn't wanna throw it away. And it's not worth anything secondhand. It's just the trash iPad
Yeah. Haw has, I also have a Kindle in there too.
But the reason I st I started using the iPad is because I can read books on the Kindle but. If I've also got the audio to go with it, I can play the audio. While I'm there. Yeah. And everybody wonders why I read so many books. It's there's two reasons why I read so many books.
One, I read the books while I'm in the bathroom. Yeah. And number two, I'm not on Facebook. very simple. That's how read so many
00:16:52 Vashti: many books. You do.
00:16:53 Andrew: I'm not on Facebook. Every one. Why? I'm not on That's why. Cuz I like to read books.
00:16:59 Vashti: So yeah. But no. Anyway, so cloth wipes, family wipes.
00:17:02 Andrew: Yeah, cloth wipes. Cool. So does anybody sell like a cloth wipe package for the home?
00:17:08 Vashti: Look, yeah, you can get cloth wipe packages. Cheeky wipes is one that has a cloth wipe system
where
00:17:15 Andrew: you she's just up the road
00:17:17 Vashti: from her No, she's not,
isn't no.
Kylie sold cheeky wipes.
00:17:23 Andrew: Oh, did Oh, okay. Oh, it's funny, I saw the husband in the in the shops the other day. He didn't tell me they'd sold
00:17:30 Vashti: Oh, yeah.
No, years ago
00:17:31 Andrew: because he's he wants to, he's thinking about sending his kids to the same school. okay. Our kids go to, so we ask my kids what they thought of the school. never ask kids what they think of school. It doesn't matter what school they go to. They're not gonna be, they're not gonna be happy about the school because Gabriel straight out said, oh, it sucks
00:17:50 Vashti: Yeah,
00:17:51 Andrew: And I said to him, I said, mate, They're gonna say that about any school. They said that about their last school, don't ask kids about school.
00:17:59 Vashti: that
Oh,
Look, we might talk about toilet training pants and nighttime training in another episode. Hey, Andrew? We'll leave that one here for today.
00:18:10 Andrew: Cool. Thank you, Vashti
00:18:12 Vashti: thanks,
Andrew. I'll see you in a couple of weeks.
00:18:15 Andrew: Yes. Yeah. Yes. Like clockwork. except november .
00:18:18 Vashti: Okay. Bye. Bye.