Potty training is a major milestone (for your toddler and you as a mom). Having the right tools can make all the difference. Our free printable potty training chart helps track progress and makes the process more fun and rewarding for your little one.

After potty training six kids, plus countless daycare kids during my time as a home daycare provider, I can safely tell you that potty training is not my favorite stage of parenting tiny humans.

The good news is, potty training probably isn’t as hard as you are making it out to be in your head and even kids who seem to really struggle with it usually have an “aha moment” where they everything falls into place and they just get it.

That’s not to say potty training can’t come with some challenges. We have some potty training tips and tricks for you below, but first, grab your free printable potty training chart below to get started.

Download Your Free Potty Training Chart

Potty training can be a big challenge, but a simple chart can make all the difference in keeping your child motivated!

Download our free potty training chart here (or click on the image below) and start tracking your child’s progress today.

How to use your Free Printable Potty Training Chart

Not sure where to start?

We’ve got you covered. You can use this potty training chart any way you want. I’ll share what we’ve done and then give you a few alternatives.

I like to take a slightly laid-back stance on potty training (you can read more about what I do here) because I want to be sure that my child is ready before we start training and we have the time to devote to it. It’s purely to preserve my own energy because I know that if I wait until they are ready potty training will be WAY less work.

My kids have all been very visual, so they love having a chart to keep track of their potty training success. They love charts for pretty much anything. Check out our favorite chore chart here.

We’ve always used some sort of sticker chart while potty training in combination with a few other things, depending on what worked with each kid, so we were excited to create this free potty training printable for you.

• Introduce the potty chart in a way that gets your child excited about it
• Post the potty chart somewhere your child can see it (we’ve posted it on the fridge or the bathroom mirror, depending on the child)
• Let your child put a sticker in a circle on the chart every time they have a successful trip to the bathroom (or every time they make an effort, depending on your child)
• Have your child earn a small prize for filling the sticker chart* I used Hot Wheels cars with my boys . . . we have A LOT of Hot Wheels cars. My daughter was all about the candy, so she got a small treat (very small; I’m taking like 1 M&M here) every time she used the potty for the first little while
• Make a BIG deal out of each success. Celebrate it as a family. Dance around the room. Do whatever you need to to let your child know that their success matters

Potty Training Rewards

Toddlers can be very motivated to potty train with some small rewards. I find that giving them a specific milestone, like filling their entire potty training chart or getting to the end of a row if you are in the beginning stages of potty training, can be very motivating.

A few notes about potty training rewards: Decide ahead of time whether you want something consumable, collectible, or something you will have to sneak away from your child in the dead of night eventually to get rid of clutter (we’ve all been there). Potty training can take a while, so take that into consideration before you lock yourself into something that you don’t want to stick with. It is ALWAYS okay to change your potty training reward or stop it completely. Some kids are not motivated by rewards or take advantage of them. Feel free to change your methods if you need to.

• Small candies like M&Ms – I like these for the early stages of potty training because you can do a single candy and it isn’t overloading kids with sugar
• Finger puppets – These are fun because kids can watch their collection grow as they get closer to being potty trained
• Hot Wheels Cars – One of my kids LOVED getting a Hot wheels car for each day he stayed dry in the eary stages. His Hot Wheels collection became his prized collection after that. We bought them in bulk to save and distributed them each day, then after each week, as time went on (eventually using them for night potty training)
• Stickers – Kids are getting stickers on their potty training chart but some kids LOVE stickers to put on themselves, too so these make a fun daily reward for the early stages when you need something small
• Art supplies – If you want something that just adds to what you already have at home, letting your toddler choose a new arts and crafts supply to add to their collection can be a great choice
• Lego sets – this is a larger prize OR you can break some of the Duplo sets into groups of smaller prizes for prizes to give out at the end of each week. This is a great way to teach delayed gratification and can be very motivating for some kids
• Toy animals – Having a prize bucket of toy animals to choose from can be a great way to start a collection, and these are fantastic for pretend play
• Coupons for X amount of time of screen time – You’ll have to decide how much time each day of potty training is worth
• A day out to a museum/pool/park/library/etc. – Some kids are more motivated by activities and time with you than things. Let them work towards a fun day out as a reward
• A Milestone party – Some kids LOVE when the focus is on them. That typically only happens when their birthday comes around once a year. Let them work toward a potty trained party when they are finished potty training so your family can celebrate them

How to phase out potty training rewards: Eventually, you will need to start phasing out your potty training rewards. No one is going to kindergarten asking for a treat for going potty. What worked for us was spacing out the time between rewards. Just like we gave them out closer together in the beginning, as potty training skills improved, we gave out rewards for longer periods of time. Our final challenge for most of my kids was night potty training, so we often had staying dry at night as our final reward that lingered after we stopped the other rewards.

Night Potty Training Tips

Night-time potty training is usually one of the things parents struggle with the most. Fortunately, kids will pick that up eventually, too.

The key is to give your toddler the space to figure it out without stressing them out about changing sheets in the middle of the night or ruining mattresses, and that is much easier to do with some great potty training tools. When you remove that stress, your toddler is free to learn, and the process is much smoother.

Here are our favorite night potty training tools:

• Waterproof mattress protector – Don’t stress about ruining your mattress. Just don’t.
• Gorilla Grip Washable Underpad – This can hold up to 8 cups of liquid and can even go over your sheet if you want to limit the laundry you have to do. It makes for really quick bed resets in the middle of the night. I would recommend putting TWO layers of sheets on your child’s bed with two layers of these pads so you can just pull off the top pad and sheets when they have an accident and everyone can get back to bed.
• Night Time Pull Ups – We always started with Night Time Pull Ups then phased them out
• Reusable Training Underwear – Don’t want to use Pull Ups? These Training Underpants are great options
• Bedwetting alarm – This is for OLDER KIDS who haven’t picked up nighttime potty training but it can be a good option if night potty training doesn’t go as planned. I would not recommend it for a toddler

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