With two or three toddlers to wrestle into diapers, it's no wonder parents of multiples yearn for diaper-free days! But when do you begin the daunting task of toilet training more than one child?

One Mom's Story
Donna Mathews is a Tacoma, Wash., mother of fraternal twins born prematurely at 31 weeks gestation. "They weighed just over 3 pounds," says Mathews. "Thank God and medical technology, their lungs were developed enough that they could breathe on their own. They are very healthy children and seem to be right on track developmentally."

Mathews decided to potty train her twins the summer after their second birthday. She read them books about kids using the potty and showed them a video about potty training. "They liked having their 'own' potty," she says. "I tried helping them sit on the potty every two hours, but it was definitely ‘hit or miss’ as far as them actually using it."

After about three months of consistent teaching, Mathews says her daughter seemed to catch on to the potty training concept. "I would say, however, that she wasn't fully trained until around her third birthday," she says. "My son, Mitchell, was a different story. I was hoping that once he saw Madeline using the toilet, he would follow suit, but that was not the case. I tried all the 'tricks.' I rewarded him with candy every time he used the potty; I took him to the store and let him pick out his own underwear; I threatened him with not being able to go to preschool and a number of other tactics that only increased my frustration level."

It was during his 3-year-old checkup that Mathews brought up her frustration about her son's lack of toilet training progress. The pediatrician suggested Mathews take a step back from the training, put her son back in training pants and give it some time. "One morning, Mitchell woke up and said he needed to go potty," says Mathews. "He went into the bathroom, used the toilet, and he's never had another accident since."

Mathews says her experience confirmed what experts have been saying all along: Every child is different. Every child needs to learn at his own pace and not every training technique will work on every child, whether they are twins or singletons. "Like everything else I did with my twins, I felt that if I didn't train them both at the same time, with the same technique, I would be 'off schedule,'” says Mathews. "Potty training was totally different than eating, sleeping and changing diapers. They each needed to start showing their independence, and they needed to do it their own way on their own timeline."

Different Strokes
"Each family needs to evaluate their own situation individually," says Lynda Haddon, owner of multiplebirthfamilies.com, a resource for parents expecting multiples. "Multiples are often not ready to meet the same expectations of singleton children."

Haddon also points out that most experts believe boys generally take longer to train than girls, so mixed sets of multiples will probably be ready to toilet train at different times. “Parents know their children best and are best suited to decide when toilet training can begin, in spite of feedback from family and friends," she says.

Just because two children are born at the same time, it doesn't necessarily mean they are going to be ready to toilet train at the same time. Each child needs to be treated as an individual, with his or her own developmental time frames. "I would recommend that each child be encouraged in all areas of their lives," says Haddon. "If a child is forced to do something they are just not ready to do, it can create a traumatic disaster. We wouldn't force the second or third child to sit up or roll over just because one is already doing so. Expecting one (or more) to conform to his co-multiple's readiness could cause everyone problems and headaches."

"It is not necessarily written in stone that just because they are multiples, they will all be ready at the same time to be potty trained," says Nancy Langdon, a mother of 11-year-old twin boys from Austin, Texas. "In fact, most multiples are not ready at the same time."

Langdon says she has found that if parents of multiples think of it as raising two or more children the same age, instead of thinking of them as twins or triplets, it causes less self-induced stress. Langdon says parents often set themselves up for frustration by thinking that because their children were born at the same time, they are the same. It's especially important to future development to consider each child as an individual and not put unnecessary expectations on a child who is not as advanced in a certain area as the others. Kids are all different – even multiple birth children!

"Moving to each child's inner beat is essential in order to have the maximum amount of success," says Haddon. "It is extremely important that parents refrain from comparing their children. This usually has lasting negative effects on the children themselves and can impede the training process."

Toilet Training Tips
According to Multiple Births Canada, it is important for parents to have a potty seat for each child so that each can have possession of their own toileting area. In this way, they can choose to practice together or apart, progress at their own rates and not feel they have to challenge their sibling for a chance to use the potty.

"They can learn from each other," says Haddon. She has talked to parents who say one child can be encouraged by the other's successes with potty training. "But if one is disturbing the other – one wants to train and another doesn't – then move the one who wants to use the potty to another room and let him have privacy."

Multiple Births Canada recommends the following when potty training multiple birth children:

• Remember to assess each child's readiness individually.
• Don't compare the children to each other or place blame regarding readiness or performance.
• Don't make a child who is ready to toilet train wait for his or her siblings to be ready.
• Take each child individually to the potty chairs if your children are ready to proceed at different times.

Toilet training multiple birth children isn't really all that different than training singletons. It takes the same amount of patience, encouragement and consistency to complete the task – it's just multiplied by two or three or more!

Want to see more?

• Quiz: Is My Toddler Ready for Toilet Training
• Toilet Training Series
• Two Peas in a Pod? 10 Ways to Encourage Individuality in Twin Toddlers
• Talk about it!