Flashback: Traveling with the Recently Potty Trained

Anytime you are planning travel with a child that has just started potty training, you have to weigh some things. First, do you regress the child back to diapers or pull-ups (glorified diapers) or do you continue potty training from the road.

On our trip to get Caleb in 2008 we opted to take Xander from underwear back to pull-ups. It made sense. He had just turned three, and his potty training was unreliable at best. Peer pressure meant he was dry at school, but two seconds after he came in the house at night, he had wet his pants. On the weekends it was worse. He would look at you, smile, and pee his pants. I didn't want to rely on this on a 12-hour flight, or while away from the hotel on a mini-excursion, or on a train.

So we went to pull-ups, and he happily didn't miss his underwear. I waited until we got home, and then started a full force effort to potty train. It took about one month to get him retrained, and another three months until he would do number two in the potty ... but it felt like the right decision.

One thing to note is that in Europe the concept of pull-ups is almost unheard of. When you buy them they are thicker, like a good nighttime pull-up. I actually preferred them to the flimsy Huggies or Pampers for traveling. Much less likely to leak.

Recently we took Caleb, now a member of the recently potty trained, on a short get-a-way to Florida. We opted for pull-ups (actually for both boys) on the airplane, but otherwise kept him in underwear. Since we were staying in one place, this was also the right decision.