Can I be honest and say something most people in my line of work won't?
The holidays are usually a bad time to start potty training. And often a hard time to protect the training you've already done.
I know that isn't what the seasonal blog posts say. The seasonal blog posts say "with planning and patience, you can do it all!" And I'm sure you can do most things. But I've watched too many families try to launch potty training between Thanksgiving and New Year's and end up worse off in January than they were in November — exhausted, second-guessing, and convinced something is wrong with their child.
Nothing is wrong with their child. Something was wrong with the timing.
So let me change your frame of reference. Instead of asking how do I potty train during the holidays?, ask: what does our family actually need this December? The honest answer for most families isn't a new training project. It's one of three other things. Let's walk through them.
I know. Not the answer you came here for.
But hear me out. Successful potty training — the kind that takes and doesn't unravel — needs roughly ten days where your household is the calmest version of itself. Two committed adults, mostly home, normal meals, normal naps, normal bedtimes. The accidents are not the problem. The accidents are the teacher. But the teacher can only do her job if the classroom isn't on fire.
December is the classroom on fire.
There's the travel. The grandparents who just want a moment with the kiddo and don't quite remember why you're stopping every thirty minutes. The cousin's house where the bathroom is upstairs and the kids are downstairs and your two-year-old has never met any of these people before. The schedule that gets thrown by a 4pm Christmas Eve service. The sugar. Oh gosh, the sugar.
If you start in December, here's what tends to happen: you get four pretty good days at home, you travel, the wheels come off, you get back, you can't tell whether to push through or restart, and by mid-January you've decided your child "wasn't ready." That phrase — "she wasn't ready, so we stopped" — makes my shoulders pull up every time I hear it, because nine times out of ten she was perfectly ready. The household just wasn't.
So if you haven't started yet, my honest counsel is this: enjoy the holidays in diapers. Block off ten days in early January when school is back, the relatives are gone, and your house is your house again. Then begin. You'll thank yourself.
(Want a guide for what those ten days actually look like? Here's the real one.)
This is a different conversation. If you've already started — if your child has had real success at home and you're a few weeks in — your job during the holidays isn't to push for new progress. It's to not lose ground.
That's a small, achievable goal. And it's the right one.
Here's what protecting your progress actually looks like:
Keep the bathroom routine sacred. Same morning sit, same after-nap sit, same before-bed sit. Even at grandma's house. Even at the airport. The cue your child has been learning isn't "sit on this specific potty in this specific house" — it's "my body and my grown-up have a rhythm, and we honor it." Don't break the rhythm because you're not home.
Pack like you mean it. A portable potty or fold-up seat. Three full changes of clothes per day of travel — yes, three, because the day you pack two is the day you need four. A wet bag for accidents. Cotton underwear, not pull-ups. (More on pull-ups in a moment.)
Brief the family before you arrive, not when you arrive. A short text to the host: "We're three weeks into potty training and it's going well. We'll need to step away every 30–45 minutes for a quick try. If she has an accident, please just let me know quietly — we don't make a fuss about it." That one text prevents about 80% of the holiday potty-training drama I see.
Pick your battles with extended family. Your mother-in-law who potty trained four kids in the seventies has opinions. Your sister who has a Ph.D. in early childhood development has different opinions. Your father-in-law thinks the whole thing is silly. You don't have to win any of those arguments. You have to keep your child in cotton underwear and keep your routine. That's it. Smile, nod, sit your kiddo on the potty, move on.
I get asked this every December. "Can I just put her in a pull-up for the long car ride? For the flight? For Christmas morning at grandma's?"
In my heart of hearts, I'd rather you didn't.
A pull-up is a diaper. Your child's body cannot tell the difference. And the message you've spent three weeks teaching — "the feeling of being wet is something we don't want, so we go to the potty" — gets unwritten every time you put one on. It's not a moral failure if you do it. But it isn't a neutral choice, either.
If you must use one for a specific high-stakes window (a six-hour flight, a wedding ceremony, a night drive across state lines), call it what it is to your child: "This is a diaper for the car. When we get to grandma's, we're back in underwear." Don't blur the line. Children are sharper than we give them credit for, and they read blur as permission.
Regression at the holidays is real and it's almost never about the potty. It's about the disruption.
New beds. New faces. Excitement that runs higher than a small body knows how to hold. Sugar at hours when sugar doesn't usually appear. A nap that didn't happen because Aunt Bea wanted just one more photo. Of course your child is having accidents. Of course she is.
Here's the move: don't restart training. Don't go back to diapers. Don't lecture. Quietly, kindly, increase the frequency of "Let's try" trips — every 45 minutes instead of every two hours. Tighten the routine. Get her in bed on time even if it means leaving the party early. And know, in your bones, that the regression almost always resolves within a week of returning to normal life.
What looks like a setback at the holidays is, more often than not, your child telling you she's tired. Listen to her. The pottying will come back. It didn't go anywhere.
If I could give every mother one thing for Christmas, it would be permission to not try to fix everything before December 31st.
Potty training isn't a year-end deadline. There is no gold star for being out of diapers by January 1st. The pediatrician isn't keeping a list. Your child isn't behind. The grocery-store stranger who asks "is she potty trained yet?" will not be at her wedding.
Pick the strategy that fits the actual season your family is in. Wait if you need to wait. Protect if you're already in it. Breathe if you're regressing. And know, however this December goes, that the work is mostly on the adult side — which means the part you can control is the part that matters.
You can do this. Just maybe not all of it. And maybe not all at once.
If you'd like help figuring out which of those three categories your family is in, we'd be honored to walk it with you. You can book a consult — Elimination Communication, Potty Training, or Special Needs Potty Training — whenever you're ready. Even if "ready" is sometime in January. Especially then.
When you think of pottying, think of The Potty School.
Honored to be part of your pottying journey, ~ Michelle, The Potty School