8 Tips for Traveling with Your Newly Potty-Trained Toddler

You’ve successfully potty-trained your toddler—congratulations!  Now you’ve got an upcoming vacation.  How do you handle bringing the potty, dealing with accidents, public restroom fears, and other logistics?

My family recently traveled to the beach with our 17-month-old daughter, who had just been potty-trained about a month prior to our trip.  She is my third child that I’ve potty trained before age two, and I traveled with them all.  If you’ve just potty-trained your child or are wondering whether you should attempt potty-training before an upcoming trip, read on for some awesome traveling hacks!

Tip 1:  Bring a Portable Potty.

Newly trained toddlers are just getting used to responding to their bladder and bowel needs.  When they need to go, they need to go NOW.  There isn’t always time to find a restroom, so it’s best to have a travel potty on hand until your child can reliably hold it for longer intervals.

The ideal potty should fit into your backpack or the basket of a stroller.  A compact potty with a handle that can clip to your backpack/stroller works great.  My mom traveled all over Europe with me when I was a year old and kept this small white potty clipped to her backpack for me and my sister to use:

You can also find foldable potties; a list of great candidates can be found here.  I recently purchased this collapsible potty from Amazon:

I chose this one because it collapses completely flat and fits into a cloth diaper wet bag.  It fits into my backpack or stroller with ease, and it comes with plastic bags to line it with so that you can easily dispose of messy contents when out and about.

If you don’t like wasting a plastic bag each time the potty is used, I found that I could open the potty halfway and insert a collapsible doggy bowl inside to serve as a reusable insert (the potty itself is not water-tight due to the way it collapses). 

 

Both the doggy bowl and the plastic liners fit neatly inside the potty when it is fully collapsed. 

I also recommend storing a few baby wipes inside a Ziploc bag in or near your potty just in case you need to wipe a poopy butt on the go.  Once while at the beach, our daughter surprised us with a poop in the potty and we had to go all the way back to our beach house to clean her!

Tip 2:  Bring a Foldable Toilet Seat Reducer

Public restrooms can be scary for little ones.  Loud flushes and hand driers, gigantic toilets that they could fall into, sinks they can’t reach… Public restrooms in the USA were not made with children in mind! 

When my first child was freshly potty-trained at 18 months old, he was terrified of public toilets.  I tried hovering him over the toilet or sitting him on the edge of the seat and holding him in place.  He could not relax and go like that.

Then I bought a foldable toilet seat reducer, and it was a GAME CHANGER.  Once he felt stable sitting on the toilet, he could relax enough to go pee.  In fact, the foldable seat reducer is what I think pushed us from “potty-trained at home” to “completely potty-trained” and gave us the confidence to put diapers behind us for good.

This is the seat I bought on Amazon over 7 years ago:

Three kids later, it’s still in perfect working order.  It folds down plenty small to fit into a purse or backpack and is a must-have item for going out and about with your toddler.

Do I need BOTH a travel potty AND a foldable toilet seat?

That really depends on your needs.  If you're going to be at the beach, camping, hiking, or anywhere a public toilet will be inaccessible, a portable potty is a must. 

If you don't plan to stray from civilization too much, though, you can probably get away with just the toilet seat reducer.  Some kids will refuse to use public toilets even with the reducer, however, in which case a small potty is probably your best bet.

Tip 3:  Put a Sticky Note Over the Automatic Flush

If your child is afraid of the sound of the toilet flushing, carry a pack of sticky notes in your purse and stick one over the automatic flush sensor.  This will keep the toilet from randomly flushing while your child sits on it.  Then, once she’s done her business, you can remove and dispose of the note so that the toilet will flush when you’re ready for it.

Tip 4:  Offer the Potty at Strategic Times

If you’re flying, offer the potty right before boarding and (for shorter flights) immediately after landing.  For longer flights, you’ll probably need to offer the potty while you’re in the air.  If you bring a portable potty, your child can use it in his seat.  Or, you can set up the foldable toilet seat reducer in the airplane bathroom.

If you’re driving to your destination, be sure to offer regular potty stops along the way.  You can take your child into a public restroom or just have him use the potty in/near the car.

When you’re sight-seeing, it’s best to offer the potty immediately upon arrival and then every hour or two.  While we were in Florida, we spent one morning at the zoo.  After 45-minute drive and waiting in line for our tickets to be scanned, my daughter used the potty.  Then she used it again after we got back to the car a couple hours later.

Tip 5:  Protect the Car Seat (or airplane seat, train seat, etc.)

It’s OK to put your child in a diaper during a long car ride or flight if it will keep your mind at ease.  However, this is not recommended for toddlers over the age of 3, who might take it as a signal that potty training is optional.

When we flew to Florida with my daughter, we used diapers on the planes and on the hour-plus car trips to and from Universal Studios.  We treated the diapers as underwear and aimed to keep them dry by offering her the potty as usual.  On the planes, we kept the diaper dry!  In the car, we weren’t as lucky.  So, it was the right call to diaper her to protect the seat.

If you don’t want to resort to diapers to protect the seat, there are other options.  One choice is to set a prefold cloth diaper into the car seat first, and then set your child on top of the diaper.  This is a safe way to keep your child from “wearing” the diaper but also protecting the seat.  You can also use chux pads.  The same advice applies to strollers.

Whether to diaper your child or protect the seat with other means depends on your child's personality and age and your overall confidence.  How long it's been since you wrapped up diapers is also a big influence. 

Since my daughter was so new to being diaper-free, it made sense to diaper her in the car/plane.  When I flew with my oldest, however, he was almost 21 months old and had been out of diapers for months.  Although I was allowed to bring a free carryon “diaper bag” for my child, I didn’t pack a single diaper in it!  We used the toilet seat reducer on the plane and in the airport.  I sat him on a puddle pad on my lap for the flight just in case, but he didn’t have a single accident on that trip—even at night!

Tip 6:  Choose Clothes that are Easy to Remove

Once you potty-train your toddler, onesies and rompers are no longer practical.  Dresses and shirts with loose shorts or pants are ideal as you and your child work on pulling pants up and down.  You can also use crotchless pants for very young diaper-free children.

Be mindful of this when choosing swimsuits.  Full-body suits are great for protecting your child from the sun, but be sure to choose ones that snap open easily at the crotch.  Better yet, try a two-piece suit that allows your child to independently manipulate her own clothes.

When we spent the day at the beach, we brought the collapsible potty and dressed my daughter in a long-sleeve suit that unsnapped at the crotch.  This made it easy to help her use the potty.  Although we never would have known if she had peed in the ocean, she still held it for the potty!

Tip 7:  Be Prepared for Accidents

Although we all hope to avoid accidents in public, it sometimes happens.  I always carry a prefold diaper in my bag to clean up an accident or other spill.  You can also carry disinfectant wipes, a wet bag for anything that was peed on or soiled, and a change of clothes for the child.

I also recommend bringing a change of clothes for yourself.  You don’t want to get accidentally peed on and then be stuck wearing soiled clothes for a long flight or a full day at a theme park.

Tip 8:  Trust Yourself.  Trust Your Child.

Going out into the world with a newly potty-trained toddler can be scary, especially if your child is relatively “young.”  Strangers can be very unforgiving for accidents and even shame you for potty-training before your child is “ready” (whatever that means).

If you go into your trip expecting a disaster, or resort to diapers out of fear, you send the message to your child that you don't trust him.  He will likely respond accordingly, and you risk losing all the amazing progress you both have made. 

But if your child has been doing great with the potty--why should that change during your trip?  When you set the expectation that your child will do well, he might surprise you by meeting or even exceeding those expectations.

When we left for our trip, my daughter had been potty trained for just over a month.  She was 17 months old.  We ended up using exactly three diapers during our week-long vacation (two in the car, and one at night).  The rest of her pee and poop went directly in the potty.

If you feel ready to potty-train your child, but an upcoming trip is giving you pause—go for it!  Think of how much money and space you’ll save in your suitcase if you don’t need to worry about bringing diapers.  You and your child can do this!