by Wendy Bulawa

Created on: April 27, 2010

While standing in the bathroom doorway earlier this year, I was almost moved to tears of joy when I realized that my daughter had accomplished a major feat. After nearly two years of concerted toileting effort, she’d successfully used the potty and was happy to have mastered the monumental milestone. As quickly as she rose from the toilet to flush, one of my then 19-month old twin sons decided he was going to try the potty! My heart was filled with a combination of excitement….and panic! Reality began to set in and I realized I was about to have not one, but three young children toilet training at the same time.

Training one child (or singleton) is in itself a challenging feat. But, for parents in a position to train two, three, four or more children at the same time, the task becomes monumentally more demanding and difficult.

Few books have been written to educate parents of multiples on how to toilet train twins, triplets or quads. The lack of information can be troublesome for parents of multiples—who reach out to local multiples organizations for advice. Not unlike most things surrounding child rearing, advice on toileting differs from parent to parent, yet some physicians, moms and even caretakers of multiples have applied similar techniques that have toilet trained multiples for years—and new ‘manuals’ for toileting and other rearing multiples concerns are being addressed in books due out later this year.

 Introducing Toileting to Twins, Trips and Quads

Michelle LaRowe, a native New Englander who earned the 2004 International Nanny Association Nanny of the Year award and author of several parenting books including Nanny to the Rescue! and Working Mom's 411: How to Manage Kids, Career and Home, said that toilet training is often more about control than about going to the bathroom. After investing the last 15 years working exclusively with twins, LaRowe suggests that multiples be trained at the same time and that each child have their own set of training tools (training pants, underwear, hand soap, reward chart/mechanism and potty chairs) that they themselves select. “It’s important for parents of multiples to tackle potty training with a systematic approach,” she said. “Parents should have set potty break times, including when the children wake up, before and after the children eat meals, before baths, and before bed. Having a line of potties against the bathroom wall can be effective

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