When parents are having trouble with potty training, we usually look all over the place for an explanation. In some cases, the explanation is close to home: your kid’s diet! What your kid eats can impact potty training. Some foods and drinks make things easier, and some make things even more difficult. Here’s a quick guide to different ways that diet can impact potty training.
1. Salt and Sugar Secrets
Obviously, there’s a lot of ongoing debate about what to feed your child. Parents fret about establishing poor health routines at an early age that might haunt children for the rest of their lives. Salt and sugar are two things that parents often worry about, but as it turns out, they are a secret weapon when it comes to potty training. The reason for this is that salt and sugar usually make a kid thirstier. The more they drink, the more they will naturally need to go to the bathroom to pee. And as a weird, added bonus, salt and sugar can help make their poop softer, making the whole process less painful for kids.
2. Can’t Fail With Fiber
It’s kind of strange for most dads to think about kids and constipation. After all, it seems like such an “adult” problem. However, diet can make kids constipated just as easily as it makes adults, and this obviously causes big problems when it comes to potty training. There is a solution that works for both adults and children. The easiest fix for a constipated kid is to add
more fiber to their diet. There are plenty of good options here: prunes and peaches both work well, as does yogurt. Spinach and cabbage work well too, but kids at a young age are obviously going to prefer something sweeter!
3. Replace Regular Milk
Something that doesn’t change much about kids is that they love milk. And most of us dads don’t see anything wrong with that; after all, we grew up with all those goofy “it does a body good” commercials. However, traditional cow’s milk can lead to your kid being constipated. There are some good alternatives to traditional milk, though. The easiest thing is to try to switch your kid to coconut milk—the coconut helps them go to the bathroom, and it’s much healthier in the long-run than traditional milk. You can even give your kid coconut milk smoothies or freeze that smoothie into a popsicle: you’ll get the same potty training benefits, and kids love it.
4. Water By Any Other Temperature
As we’ve mentioned earlier, hydration is key to helping kids with potty training. It helps them to go number one, and it makes sure that number two is able to come out alright. There is no replacement for water when it comes to hydrating power, but kids can sometimes be finicky about drinking plain, old water. There are some easy ways to change water up, though. You can give it to them at different temperatures by adding some ice, or you can change up how they drink it: if they always drink from a bottle, then water from a real cup will feel special. However you do it, make sure they stay well-hydrated during the entire duration of the potty training!
Additional Potty Training Resources:
Nutritional Considerations in Potty Training 'Potty Whisperer' Toilet-Trains Toddlers in One Day
