Overnight guests while toilet training

[lemondropsandchimneytops]

Would you have overnight guests when toilet training? We're planning on starting in a few weeks and relatives have asked to come and stay after we'd have hopefully been training for about 5-6 days. My instinctive reaction is to say no to overnight guests but is that an overreaction?

Just interested in the viewpoint of people who've been through it because it's new to me!

It depends on what you are doing with guests; acting as tour guide being out all day? Otherwise, I would not see an issue.

Providing you're not asking THEM to do the toilet training I don't see any issue. Life has to continue normally regardless doesn't it? Or if you're that concerned then delay it by a week.

For me it would have to be the sort of guest who would be willing to make their own hot drinks and do their own thing at least some of the time.

What’s the relevance of the overnight bit? Surely DC will go to sleep with a night nappy on? Or do you mean that you’ll be expected to entertain the guests while they stay which not ideal really I would plan to stay close to home for the first week of potty training or that they’ll be offended if DC poops in the potty in full view of the living room?

No reason not to.

Are they helpful. Are they understanding of reasonable expectations of small children

Nighttime isn’t an issue.

Will they be happy to stay at home more during the day?

I don't see why toilet training would have any effect on overnight guests.

If they're helpful and supportive, yes. If they're a pain and need entertaining then no.

I don't understand the focus on overnight? Surely the biggest issue is if they want to go out with you and you're still in the very new stages of toilet training where you're staying close to the house?

By day 5 or 6 you should have it pretty well done as long as you're keeping a good eye on your little one.

Relevance of the overnight bit is just that I'm not talking about people popping in for an hour or two. I have this vision of getting nothing else done other than following her round with a potty 🤣

Relatives in question are happy to entertain themselves and make their own cups of tea etc.

Thanks for the replies!

I think it's clear why you'd be bothered by overnight - it's not like guests for a couple of hours
But if they'll be supportive it's more adults who can give your child lots of praise for doing so well!

We usually stayed around the house and did no pants the first few days to make it a bit easier and had potties dotted around the house, you aren't going to be doing days out with distractions if you are starting from scratch. You need to be around the house really and your child be relaxed enough to say I need the potty/take themselves to it. Having some randoms around isn't going to help. We waited for a week where we didnt need to go out much to see if clicks, our 3 children got it fairly quickly having a week blocked out like this, nighttime took much longer but that wasn't a problem.

We did. But we made it clear we're potty training our youngest so the potty is here out all the time and we talk a lot about bums and wees and poos openly at the moment, and there is a pile of old towels and the mop instantly accessible just in case sorry about that. Then crack on. My little one loves engaging any visitors in their potty-use celebrations and we haven't yet had anyone not join in and celebrate either 🤭

You're warmly welcome to stay, we aren't a show home.

No, you’ll be preoccupied for the first 2 weeks or so (we literally didn’t leave the house beyond some walks and out in the garden and to nursery). You just won’t have time to spend with them. Never mind, no one wants someone stopping every 15 minutes in the middle of cooking their dinner to put a child on the toilet. Save it for a few weeks later.

We recently trained DS2 and even though to be honest days 5 and 6 were not great, because he got ill a few days in and was not learning much, it would have been okay to have guests. We found with both DCs that after a couple of days they'd consolidated their wees so they weren't going more than once an hour max, and only one poo a day if that.

As an aside, following around with the potty is not the only way to do things, as I discovered by accident. My DD shunned the potty from the word go and sat on the loo to try/go (with a child seat) because she was often in the bathroom when I was going to the loo so thought that was where things are done. It probably meant more knickers for me to wash but it was all over and done with pretty quickly.

On day 5-6 we had ours back in clothes (started with no bottoms) and were doing small trips out so we could have managed if the guests weren't expecting long trips out and were happy to go at our pace and respect our potty training method and that a potty was still in the lounge at that point (moved to the bathroom soon after that). I would have preferred not having guests though as with one of ours it was a tricky time! We couldn't have had the in-laws as they'd have too many opinions on how we were doing it. We didn't night train (they just naturally became dry at night soon after day training) so there would be no disturbed nights but if you are night training at the same time that could be an issue with guests.

Appreciate all the input. We're going to delay the visitors