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Toilet Training

Potties, Seats & Getting Up There

First decision: does your child get their own little throne, or go straight to the big toilet? Plenty of families end up owning both.

Potty

The classic for a reason. A potty is a toddler-sized loo that sits on the floor, so little legs don't have to scale the big toilet every time nature calls. Some kids love having their own throne, others refuse it entirely and want to do exactly what you do. You won't know which kid you've got until you try.

Toilet Seat

Not everyone wants a separate potty to clean (fair enough). A toilet seat, sometimes called a seat reducer, sits on top of your normal loo and shrinks the hole to toddler size, so bub feels secure instead of hanging on for dear life. Handy if your child wants to skip the potty stage altogether.

Toilet Ladder

Toddlers like doing things themselves, loudly and often. A toilet ladder combines a small seat with its own set of steps and handles, so your child can climb up, get settled and get down again without calling for backup. Great for building independence, less great for tiny bathrooms.

Step Stool

You'll be amazed how many jobs one little stool does. It boosts your child up to the toilet, gets them to the basin for hand washing and gives their dangling feet somewhere to push against while they're sitting (which genuinely helps with number twos). And unlike a lot of toilet training gear, it'll probably still be earning its keep at the bathroom basin years from now.

Toddler Urinal

For boys who want to stand like Dad but can't quite reach the target. A toddler urinal sticks to the wall at their height, and many come shaped like frogs or elephants because apparently that helps. Some families swear by them, others go straight to the big toilet with a step stool.

Wee Target

Aim is a learned skill, and the learning phase is rough on your bathroom floor. A wee target is a small floating shape (or a sticker inside the bowl) that gives boys something to aim at, turning target practice into a game instead of a mopping situation. Cheerios work too, say the mums who'd rather not buy a product for this.

Faucet Extender

Hand washing is half the job, and most toddlers can't reach the tap water even standing on a stool. A faucet extender clips onto your tap and brings the stream forward to little hands. Cheap, simple and saves you lifting a soggy child over the basin twelve times a day.

Undies & Pull-Ups

This is where toilet training shopping gets genuinely confusing, because half these products look identical.

Underwear

The end goal. Proper undies with a favourite character on them can be surprisingly motivating, and unlike a pull-up, there's nowhere for an accident to hide. The early days can put a surprisingly large number of pairs through the wash.

Training Pants

Halfway between undies and a nappy. Training pants are washable cloth undies with extra absorbent layers sewn in, so a small accident doesn't end up on the floor but your child still feels wet and uncomfortable. Good for the wobbly middle weeks, and for car trips when you're not brave enough for bare undies yet.

Disposable Pull-Ups

These look like nappies but pull up and down like undies, so your child can practise the routine without you unpicking tabs every time. The catch: they're designed to absorb a full accident, so they feel much more like a nappy than washable training pants do. Lots of families save them for outings and sleep.

Nappy Pants

Here's where labels get sneaky. Nappy pants are really just nappies in pull-up form, designed for wriggly babies who won't lie still for a change rather than for toilet training. If your toddler is still in nappies day to day, these make changes easier, but they're not doing any training work.

Absorbent Pyjamas

For the gap between dry days and dry nights. Absorbent pyjamas have absorbent layers built into the pants, so a night-time wee can be contained without a separate pull-up underneath. They look and feel much more like regular PJs, which is really the point.

Loose Clothing

Not a product so much as a strategy, but it belongs on the list. Elastic waists, no overalls, no fiddly buttons: when a toddler needs to go, you've got about eight seconds. Dresses and trackies are toilet training gold. Save the cute denim pinafore for after they've mastered it.

Waterproof Shoes

Daycare mums, this one's for you. When an accident happens standing up, it travels south, and sneakers with laces don't come back from that easily. Waterproof shoes in the Crocs family rinse clean under a tap and dry before the next wear, which is exactly why so many daycares quietly suggest them for the training weeks.

Night Training

Dry days and dry nights don’t always arrive together. This shelf is mostly about protecting the bed while you’re waiting for the second one to catch up.

Mattress Protector

Mattresses cost hundreds and accidents don't stop at wee, which makes this less a toilet training buy than a general parenting one. It goes on before the sheet and covers the whole thing, edges included. Worth thinking about before you start: with one, you're stripping the bed in the middle of the night and waiting on a wash cycle. With a spare, you're back in bed in five minutes.

Waterproof Bed Mat (with wings)

It's 2am, the bed is wet, and what you put down at bedtime decides whether this takes five minutes or twenty. The mat sits on top of the sheet where your child sleeps, and the wings tuck under the mattress each side so it can't wander off in the night. Whip it off, throw down a fresh one, everyone's back to sleep before they've properly woken up.

Bed Pad (no wings)

The same idea without the tuck-in wings, so it's lighter, cheaper and easier to wash, but it can shift around under a wriggly sleeper. Some mums layer one over a winged mat for double protection, or keep them for the couch, the pram and Grandma's bed.

Waterproof Pillow Protector

Because accidents don't always respect which end of the bed they're supposed to happen at. Kids roll, migrate and sleep upside down, and a soaked pillow at 3am is a special kind of defeat. A zip-on waterproof protector under the pillowcase is a two-minute, few-dollar fix you'll never think about again.

Bed Wetting Alarm

Worth knowing this isn't a starting-out toilet training product. Bedwetting alarms are generally used for older kids (usually seven and up) who are still regularly wetting at night. A sensor detects the first drops and sounds an alarm, helping them learn to recognise when they need to wake for a wee. This one's worth discussing with a GP or continence professional before it lands in your cart.

Night Light

If the dark is what stops your child making the trip to the toilet, a portable night light they can carry, or a soft light in their room, makes the route feel a lot less daunting. Warm-toned lights are the go, since bright white light can wake everyone up properly.

Wall Lights

Same job, different spot. Plug-in wall lights along the hallway and in the bathroom light the route from bed to loo, so your child can find their way without flicking on the big lights (or waking you to escort them). Set and forget.

Out & About

Toilet training doesn't pause because you've left the house. You're about to visit every public toilet within twenty kilometres.

Portable Potty

Because toddler bladders have a flair for drama, and their favourite time to announce "I need to do a wee" is on the freeway. A portable potty folds flat or comes as a compact seat, lives in the boot, and turns any roadside stop into a toilet. Mums of newly trained kids call this one a lifesaver, and they're not exaggerating.

Car Seat Protector

"I don't need to go" and reality are only loosely related for the first few months, and a car seat is a terrible place to find that out. A waterproof pad under your child catches it before it reaches the harness padding, which you'd otherwise be dismantling and washing by hand. This is one to check against your car seat instructions for compatibility.

Disposable Toilet Seat Covers

Public toilets and toddlers who want to touch absolutely everything: not a dream combination. Disposable covers go over the seat, do their job once and get binned. A packet lives happily in the nappy bag for months costing you nothing until the day you're very glad it's there.

Travel Toilet Seat

The fold-up cousin of the toilet seat at home. It unfolds to shrink any public toilet to toddler size, because a big unfamiliar loo is scary enough without the feeling you might fall in. Not to be confused with the portable potty (a whole toilet) or seat covers (hygiene only, no size help): this one's the middle child, and for a recently trained kid it's often the one that gets used most.

Wet Bag

If you're leaving the house during toilet training, and you are, wet undies are coming home with you at some point. Zipped in here, they stay contained, smell and all, instead of loose in your handbag next to your phone. It gets a second life at swimming lessons long after training's done.

Plastic Bags

The budget wet bag. A roll of nappy sacks or a few reused shopping bags in the pram basket do the same containment job for the price of nothing. Less glamorous, absolutely effective.

Hand Sanitiser

For all the times a wee arrives somewhere with no soap, no working tap, or a queue. A pump or clip-on bottle keeps everyone's hands respectable until you reach a proper sink. You're about to spend a lot more time in public toilets than you ever planned to.

Accidents & Cleanup

Accidents are part of the job, and paper towel and hope only get you so far.

Baby Wipes

You probably have a tower of these already, and they're about to get a second career. Fresh little bottoms after accidents, sticky hands, quick floor rescues: baby wipes do it all. Fresh little bottoms after accidents, sticky hands, quick floor rescues: the packet you already own can suddenly do a lot more work.

Flushable Toddler Wipes

Wiping is a skill, and toddlers are not born with it. Flushable toddler wipes are moist wipes designed to break down in the loo, making the learning stage cleaner for everyone while your child works up to dry paper. If they're going down the toilet, check the packet shows it meets the Australian/New Zealand flushability standard AS/NZS 5328; “flushable” isn't something to take on faith.

Wipes (Disinfectant)

Different job to baby wipes: these are for surfaces, not skin. Disinfectant wipes give the potty, the toilet seat and the surrounding floor a quick once-over after misses. Check the product is suitable for the surface you're cleaning, and keep these firmly in the surfaces-not-small-bottoms category.

Cleaning Spray

For the bigger cleanups that a wipe can't handle. An antibacterial spray plus a cloth deals with puddles on floorboards, tiles and (deep breath) carpet. Enzyme-based cleaners are worth knowing about too: rather than simply covering the smell with fragrance, they're designed to break down the organic mess causing it.

Grout Cleaner

Nobody warns you about this one. When a small boy and a toilet share a bathroom, wee finds the grout, and the grout holds onto the smell like a grudge. A dedicated grout cleaner gets into the lines between tiles that normal spray skates over. A very specific cleaner for a very specific toilet-training problem.

Potty Liners

Carrying a full potty through the house at arm's length is a skill nobody wants to acquire. Drop a liner in first and cleanup is lift, tie, bin. Especially useful in the car, where tipping the contents into a toilet isn't an option.

Rewards & Motivation

However you feel about bribery, sorry, positive reinforcement, most families end up using some version of it.

Incentives

The currency of toilet training. One child will do almost anything for a chocolate frog, another couldn't care less but will cross the room for a dinosaur sticker. This isn't really a product at all, it's whatever small thing happens to have value in your child's particular economy.

Reward Chart

Some kids couldn't care less about a sticker, and some will hold on for eleven minutes to earn one. Up on the wall, progress becomes something they can see building in front of them. For a kid who loves stickers, ticking things off or showing everyone what they've done, that's the whole appeal.

Reward Jar

Same idea in 3D. Each success adds a pom pom, marble or coin to a jar, and when it's full there's a bigger reward, like a trip to the playground or a new book. Good for kids motivated by working towards something, and satisfyingly rattly.

Poo Fairy Doll

Yes, it's a real thing. The Poo Fairy Doll is for the very specific child who's perfectly happy to wee in the toilet but has decided poo is a completely different negotiation. It turns that part of toilet training into a story, with a fairy who visits after a toilet poo much like her tooth-collecting colleague. Very niche, completely ridiculous-looking on the shelf, and exactly the sort of product that suddenly makes sense if you hit that particular problem.

Learning & Practice

Some kids need to see how it all works before they'll give it a go. These are the props that turn the whole thing into a game.

Picture Book

Picture books about using the toilet do the explaining for you, in words toddlers actually take in. They can introduce the idea, answer some of the questions and make the whole business feel a little less mysterious. There are plenty of Australian titles, and your library will have a stack

Potty Doll

Got a kid who digs their heels in the second a lesson is aimed at them? Let them toilet train someone else first. The doll drinks water and wees, so your child gets to run the whole routine, drink, sit, wee, wipe, wash hands, on someone else for a change.

Toilet Training Watch

Some kids get so deep into play they leave it until the last second, then past it. Set at intervals, the watch buzzes or plays a tune and does the reminding for you. The sneaky benefit: the nagging now comes from the watch, which toddlers find far more reasonable than they find you.

Toilet Doorbell

"MUUUUM, I'M DOOOONE" carries further than you'd think, particularly through a work video call. Stuck up next to the loo, it lets your child ring for wiping backup instead of bellowing through the house, and mums who've installed one tend to call it the best fifteen dollars in the bathroom.

Every product here solved one very specific problem for somebody.

You won't know which problems are yours until you're a few days in and the washing machine is going twice a day. Come back to this list once you know whether you're dealing with a happy wee-er who won't poo, a kid who's dry by day and soaked by night, or a bathroom that needs the grout seen to.

You don't have to buy for every possible problem before you've got one.