To not let my mums friend visit while potty training

[raisinglittleones]

We have decided to start potty training our 2020 baby this weekend - I’ve had it blocked out in the diary for weeks so we are all home and able to focus on the task at hand. We also have a 2021 baby so definitely need all hands on deck!

My mum has now sprung on me that a friend of hers (who is the dad of someone I used to go to school with as a child but haven’t seen in maybe 10 or more years) is staying with her this weekend and he would love to see me and the kids. I said that because of the potty training I wasn’t comfortable with having someone who is essentially a stranger (especially to my son) in the house while we are going through this big change, as I want my son to feel at ease and relaxed and not be overwhelmed.

She’s taken it personally and has said that I shouldn’t call him a stranger when he’s such a big part of our past and that his wife passed away recently so I should show some compassion.

AIBU? Am I overreacting? I've never potty trained before so have no idea what to expect - would it be fine if this guy pops round for an hour or so?

If your child was born in 2020 it’s not a baby any more!

signed a mum of a sept 2020 toddler!!

I doubt you’ll do thus with your 2021 baby!

TBH, different methods of potty training will work differently for every child and OP has obviously research her preferred method and has decided that will be best for her DC. Everyone barking about how they didn’t need to do X Y X for their child is irrelevant - everyone is different.

So the potty training issue is almost moot - but I’m still baffled as to the OP being called precious for letting a man she doesn’t know come to the house for the sole purpose of meeting two kids he doesn’t know. And the emotionally manipulate mum. How can anyone say OP is overreacting on this part?!

I wouldn't be comfortable with it either and I wouldncare what my mum had to say about it, my child, my rules.

No they don’t, seriously. If you wait till they’re ready it’s an absolute doddle. Both my kids were done in under 24 hours because we waited until they were ready.

it was literally - right you use the toilet and / or potty now. And they did. Child 1 had one accident at home on first day and that was
it. Child 2 had one accident on day 2 when we went out.

beyond that I could count on one hand the number of accidents we had and each time was definitely a caught short issue rather than child issue.

if it’s a battle it means you’ve not watched for readiness cues.

Same - mine did as it saved time.

As yours is't, I think you are over-reacting

@copenhagen84 I've never heard of this method as my DC is now a teen but just googled... 3 weeks to learn.

You are massively overreacting. Blocking out space in the diary for you all to help with potty train?! Sounds like a military operation, never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life.

@AJ09 that means until they wear underpants. The learning of going to the potty / loo every time they need to go and doing so independently happens in 3 days (usually). That's why it's such a popular method and worth taking time off if needs be. We did it on a bank holiday and just wrote that weekend off. Well worth it.

ime (6 children) it takes a couple of days to potty train a baby when they're ready. If you try to do it before then, it takes longer and you have lots of accidents to deal with (I'm a lazy parent and didn't do that). You don't need to take their trousers off or even bother with a potty if you wait. So this Oh crap method and taking time off work just seems crazy to me. As does banning a visitor for an hour.

But each to their own and all that - it's your house, your toddler and your life, so you do what is right for you.

(and to the PP who asks up thread, yes, you can tell when your child is ready and no, it isn't always when they're 2. My ds was quite a long way into being 3 but he still did it in a couple of days with no accidents and was dry at night at the same time).

This was my experience too, no blocking out of weekends or days and days without pants on needed. Just a change from pull ups to knickers, and she told us when she needed the toilet. Dry day and night from that point on with very, very few accidents ever.

I understand your concern, the best method to potty train is a block week where they can be bare bummed. Most people do it a long drawn out way with pull ups and training pants and it's no wonder it takes so long. But a week bare bummed usually does the job. But you can plan for a short visitor. My advice would be to put your son in a hooded towel poncho or a long t-shirt so he can still be bare bummed but not exposed to the visitor, and not put in pants or nappy which will undo the process.

I was thinking that, how can you decide 'we're potty training this weekend'? Why does it have to be such a major thing? Will the child feel he's let his parents down if it isn't sorted by Sunday night?
With posts like this it's no surprise that parents get so stressed, it's often self-inflicted.

Totally agree-I wouldn’t have had anyone round at the start of potty training. We went straight in, no pull ups, so went through many changes of clothes first few days, then our kids got it and we were out and about.

But how many times do these kind of threads come up on MN - if you are not comfortable having a visitor over, then no should mean no. It doesn’t matter if its a visitor wanting to see a newborn, potty training or something else-if you’re not comfortable, then meet another time.

The only other option (if you’re happy), is to explain to the visitor and say absolutely only for an hour, but in reality will that happen and will your Mum be happy to go after just an hour?

Once again, a thread to make me very grateful for grandparents that have never been pushy.

We solved the potty training by locking the toddler in the loo for the weekend as it has a tiled floor, and we took it in turns to stay outside in case anything went wrong. It was all sorted in the three days. There’s no way I’d have coped with visitors though, that would have been too stressful. So I agree with the OP.

Exactly this. No visitors 😂😂

To me a week sounds a ridiculously long time, we needed nowhere near that long. If they’re really ready why on earth does it take a week of being bare bummed? Why would being in pants undermine anything?

What's really bothering the Stepford Mums here is that a woman has the unmitigated gall to say "no" to any male.

If there's one thing that every dickmatized woman knows it's that women and children just exist to be bit players in any random man's life.

I wasn’t talking from a kid’s perspective. Random to the OP. I said in an earlier post I wouldn’t want a random man visiting even if there was no kids involved.

“What's really bothering the Stepford Mums here is that a woman has the unmitigated gall to say "no" to any male.”

Oof @CliantheLang nailed it! 👏🏻👏🏻

You're making this into a huge deal which is likely to rub off on your child. I can't believe you've taken a week off work for this.

As others have said, surely you just put them in knickers/pants and keep asking them if they need the loo then take them?

@OP. We used a similar method where it was just the three of us over a long weekend. I think it worked well for my son as he likes things to change to new routines fairly quickly. For example he didn’t like slow transitions over rooms in nursery.

He’s had a few accidents since we did but I think that it was much better for him then switching between nappies and pants in the day. And it was good as he goes to nursery full time and do we broke the back of it without having too much input from them. Not that nursery are bad but the change and two sets of ways of teaching can be confusing.

We stayed in the house for that weekend because it’s fewer distractions for potty training and him listening to his body and knowing where the toilet was. I wouldn’t have wanted people in the house as it was distracting.

It’s one weekend. It’s not fun but it’s hardly like going to the Antarctic for half the year!

The 'poor husband' as you put it wasn't allowed an opinion on the matter.

The mother of the child decided that what worked for her mother would work for her and that was how it was going to be done.

Why do you make the assumption that the husband was leaving his wife to get on with it on her own? He wasn't, but as I say, his opinion and ideas weren't taken into consideration.

A day, in my experience. I didn't faff around with pull-ups or training pants either, as PP have mentioned. Just stayed either at home or very close to home for a couple of days with all my DC so I could escort them to the loo at regular intervals/on demand. However, I watched for signs of readiness for a fair while before that. I suppose that having to block out time off work makes it a different experience, though, and not being with them all the time might also make it more difficult to see when they are ready.

Ive seen friends kids wearing pull ups for months (again doesn’t matter, their choice how to do it), but I can see how confusing that is for the child going between pants and a nappy.

It was all or nothing for us and it worked. A few days running round the garden with the potty in the middle of the lawn. Big fuss when they do a wee/poo and the sunny weather is the perfect time to start. We did put pants on so got through many pairs the first day, down to just a couple of pairs in a few days, then pretty much job done with the odd accident at pre school.

I can totally understand why someone wouldn’t want a family friend over at least during the first few days.