Question
I had asked a few questions about potty training my 19 month old twins a few months ago and I just wanted to come back and provide a progress report that will hopefully serve as some encouragement for other twin parents attempting potty training.
I potty trained my first two (singleton) children at 16 and 18 months, so this was not my first go-around with early potty training, but I have to admit that training my 19 month old twins was the single hardest part of parenting my kids thus far - ha! In the moment, it was terrible. Terrible! After 2 weeks I was having absolutely no success with either twin and the fact that there were two of them made it about four times as hard because their emotions feed off each other and they even tried to out-do each other in terms of resistance. There's also the issue of one pooping on the bedspread while you're occupied cleaning up the other's poop on the carpet. It was messy and discouraging.
I kept on keeping on with it, trying different things here and there, and at about the 3 week mark I finally had the first success. What ultimately worked was putting one small potty on top of the regular toilet (with lid closed) and another on a chair facing the toilet (so they were looking at each other) and leaving them there until they went. It's the same concept as the gate except when they pee it is sure to go in the potty because they're stuck there. At first I had to physically hold them down but eventually they gave in and just sat there (often times crying though). I checked on them periodically and as soon as they had gone pee or poop, I let them down. The first few days of trying this, there were some marathon potty sitting sessions - I mean multiple hours long. But within a few days, they got it and started peeing shortly after putting them on. By the five or six week mark, they were peeing within a few minutes of me sitting them down and having very infrequent pee accidents - maybe one every couple of days and thankfully never outside the house!
Poop was another story. They either pooped their pants or in their diaper at nap time for a good 2-3 months. Eventually a pattern started forming where they went poop after lunch every day so I started putting them on the potty right after lunch and leaving them there until they went. It took a while, but this eventually worked and they are now fully pee AND poop trained. They do not wear a diaper at nap time and one of the two wakes up dry in the morning as well (although I still diaper both of them at night). The whole process has taken about four months but I am so relieved that it's over and I never have to go through potty training twins again!
As with potty training a singleton, the key is to a) maintain your calm and b) never give up. Expect it to be a billion times more challenging with twins, but know that it's totally possible and totally worth it to have them out of diapers before age 2!
