What does success look like?

I started potty training my 23 month old on September 3rd. We are on day 6. I’m a SAHM and today is my first day solo, my husband took PTO and was helping for the first 5 days.

We were loosely following the oh crap method. Despite the book’s recommendation, we did decide to push liquids for the first 3 days because my son does well with repetition & praise so we thought the more opportunities the better. We are using pull-ups for naps & nights. He was completely naked for the first 2 days and has been commando ever since day 3.

My little guy was doing fairly well when both me and my husband were home. He had constant eyes on him. We were able to catch most pees & poops. Sometimes he’d start going in his pants, but finish on the potty. We were constantly prompting him to go. Literally every 15ish minutes, and caught many of his pees that way. Now that I’m home alone with my little guy, we’re really struggling. I can’t have 24/7 supervision on him. I need to cook his food and use the bathroom myself. I’m prompting him to use the potty about every 20 minutes. He’s occasionally going when I prompt him. But then I walk in the kitchen to make his lunch (as fast as humanly possible)…. And he’s soaked. Later I prompt him to use the potty, nothing, then I turn on Moana so I can run to the bathroom and I come back 90 seconds later, soaked again….

When my husband was home, one of us always had our eyes on him so we had many successes, but now that there is only 1 adult in the house, this is feeling much harder and unsustainable. We haven’t left the house in 6 days and the end is no where in sight

My question is, how are we doing? Are we even making progress in the right direction? Is he just too young? Am I wasting my time? Should I double down and commit, or revisit this in a few months?

Posted Sep 8, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

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