Having twins can be the most amazing experience of your life. It can also cause you to wake up in the morning wishing you were someone else. Twinning offers an honest depiction of life with twins from a mom who tries to keep things somewhere in the middle.
Potty training twins is not for the faint of heart. It’s messy business, and it feels like it will never end. But since most preschools require kids to be potty-trained before they enroll, we had no choice but to get through it.
When you’re potty training twins, you can expect twice the mess, twice the chaos and twice the equipment. And when it’s all over, you can stop buying twice the diapers, so there’s that.
One of the hardest parts about potty training twins is that often one child isn’t ready, as was the case with my two. My daughter Allie started showing “readiness signs” at 22 months: demonstrating an interest in the toilet, telling me when she did poo, wanting her diaper changed after peeing, and waking up dry. My son Nick showed no signs. He had many interests, but where he went to the bathroom was not one of them. While my daughter was working on her “life skills” as if she was planning on moving out by age three, my son was busy learning the alphabet and numbers up to 20. What went on in his diaper was for me to worry about as far as he was concerned.
One of the rules of twin parenting is “both at the same time”—and to keep my sanity, I’ve always tried to obey it if possible. While I waited for my son to show the slightest interest in potty training, I began building up our arsenal of potty paraphernalia—two potty chairs, a potty-training DVD called “Go Potty Go,” the book Everyone Poops, some Hanna Andersson thick cotton training underpants, and elastic-waist shorts for easy on-off access.
I’d be ready when they were.
