Help Your Toddler Conquer Their Fear Of The Automatic Toilet

It’s a phase that many toddlers go through—and who can blame them? These fancy, newfangled toilets with their automatic flushing (often multiple times in one sitting) do not exactly make the potty training process easier for anyone. They’re loud and they sound like they’re going suck you and everything around you down into nothingness, and all a kid wants to do is pee in peace.

A parent in our Offspring Facebook Group asked for advice recently on how to help conquer his kid’s fear of the automatic toilets and, as this is a thing many of you are dealing with (or have dealt with), he received a lot of great suggestions.

Cover up the sensor

This is the most widely offered suggestion (and therefore one you’ve likely already tried), but it’s a good place to start: Cover up the sensor. We’ve advised you in the past to use this toilet-paper-over-the-sensor trick, but several parents also preached about the virtues of carrying a stack of Post-it notes with you for just this moment.

The Post-it note is a good option because it will stick in place; a piece of toilet paper slipping off the sensor mid-deed is not what you need right now. Still, this will only work if your kid really and truly trusts that this will stop the toilet from flushing, and “trust” is not always a toddler’s strong suit.

Take baby steps

The fear of the automatic toilet is not a fear they’re likely to get over in a day. That’s why group member Sara suggests trying to conquer their fear one small step at a time:

Can you start with really small steps to work her up to using the big scary potty? Like maybe every time you go out in public, find one of those noisy potties and give her a couple Skittles just for walking inside the bathroom. And then when she does that willingly, work her up to walking in the stall. Then not going potty, just flushing while covering her ears. Eventually you can make it a game to find the noisy potties every time you go out.

Give it a nickname

One member helped her son get over his fear of the automatic toilets by making light of them. They’re not big scary contraptions that are likely to suck you into the dark abyss! No, no, they’re silly “robot potties.” Traci says:

We call the ones that auto-flush “robot potties.” Giving it a character made it less scary. It empowered my son to ask if a public bathroom was a robot potty or a normal potty. We’d talk about how silly robot potties are and laugh about how loud they were.

Bring your own

If no amount of Post-it notes, silly nicknames or gentle prodding is going to convince your child that the automatic toilets were not sent to Earth by the devil himself, you have one last option. Bring your own portable potty and set up shop in a family restroom, large stall or wherever you can find a corner of privacy.

A couple of parents in the group specifically recommended a Potette portable potty because they are small, the legs fold up, and you can get biodegradable disposable liners to use when you’re on-the-go.

And now, wash your hands, shake them off and run out quickly before the automatic hand dryers start roaring.


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