Big Little Feelings Potty Training

Getting Through Potty Training Without Losing Your Mind

The whole potty training process is basically a negotiation with a creature who cannot yet form complete sentences and has very strong opinions about where waste products should go. You will learn more about patience than you ever wanted to know. I have been through this three times now, and each time I learned something different about how not to screw it up. Big Little Feelings Potty Training is a resource set created by the company behind the popular "Big Feelings" books and materials for toddlers. They produce printable charts, reward stickers, emotion cards, and a structured approach to helping kids connect their bodily sensations with the act of using the potty. It is not a completely separate methodology from standard potty training — it is more of a packaged framework built around emotional literacy and positive reinforcement. The core idea is straightforward. You use their visual aids to help the child identify what they are feeling before, during, and after going potty. Fear, excitement, embarrassment, pride — all of these get names and faces. The theory is that when a child can articulate what is happening inside their body, they are less likely to resist or have accidents. This makes sense on paper. It also works reasonably well in practice, with some caveats I will get to.

How I Actually Used It

I started with the free printable materials on their website. The main tools are the emotion cards — little illustrated faces showing different feelings — and the reward chart. You print them out, stick them on the fridge or the bathroom wall, and start pointing at them during potty attempts. Here is what I did differently from the instructions. I skipped the reward chart entirely for the first week. I found that offering a sticker every time was too much negotiation for a two-year-old who had just discovered the concept of bargaining. Instead, I used the emotion cards as a talking tool. When my kid would sit on the potty and start whining, I would hold up the frustrated face card and say, "You feel frustrated right now." Then I would hold up the proud face card and say, "You are being so proud when you try." It took the pressure off both of us. The actual potty training happened because I stopped making it a performance and started making it a conversation. The Big Little Feelings Potty Training method works best when you treat the emotion cards as the primary tool and everything else as optional decoration. Their website also has downloadable PDFs of the full set — you can find them at biglittlefeelings.com under the potty training section. The free resources are decent. The paid bundle with laminated cards and the full sticker pack runs about fifteen dollars and saves you the printing hassle.

The Part Nobody Talks About

Here is something I wish someone had told me before I started. The biggest obstacle in potty training is not the child's willingness to sit on the potty. It is the parent's tendency to over-engage. Every time you ask "do you need to go?" or "did you pee?" you are adding pressure. Pressure creates resistance. Resistance creates accidents. Accidents create frustration. Frustration creates a cycle that can last months. The Big Little Feelings approach actually helps with this because it redirects the conversation toward emotions instead of outcomes. You are not asking "did you go?" You are asking "how does your body feel right now?" That small shift changes the entire dynamic. It turns a question that demands a yes-or-no answer into an invitation that the child can respond to however they want. Another thing nobody mentions is timing. Most people start potty training because they need to. The daycare is about to start. The grandparents are coming for a visit. The pregnancy test is positive. Starting because of external pressure is the worst time to start. The child senses the urgency and treats the potty like a threat. Wait until there is a stretch of at least two weeks where your schedule is relatively normal. The Big Little Feelings materials are designed for a calm environment where you can sit and talk about feelings. If you are rushing through this because you have to be at work in forty-five minutes, the emotion cards are just colorful paper you will throw away.

Edge Cases and When It Falls Apart

My second child was a good example of when this method hits a wall. She was thirty-four months old, physically ready, and completely uninterested in any of the emotional framework. She would sit on the potty, stare at the wall, and then run off five minutes later. The emotion cards meant nothing to her. She did not care about pride or feeling brave. She cared about the show she could watch on the tablet while she sat there. My workaround was to put the Big Little Feelings materials away entirely and switch to a plain visual timer. We set it for three minutes. She could sit and watch her show during those three minutes. When the timer went off, we got up. No praise, no stickers, no emotion discussions. Just a neutral routine. After about ten days of this, she started associating the potty with the routine itself rather than with a demand for performance. Then I brought the emotion cards back gently. She was ready for them then because the potty was no longer a source of tension. There are also children for whom this entire approach simply will not work. If your child has sensory processing differences, the idea of sitting on a cold porcelain seat while identifying abstract emotions may be impossible. If your child is on the autism spectrum, the emotional labeling may not land the way it does for neurotypical children. In those cases, the Big Little Feelings Potty Training framework can be adapted — you can still use the visual structure and the routine — but you need to adjust the language significantly and sometimes drop the emotion component altogether. A pediatric occupational therapist can help with this if you hit a wall.

What the Materials Actually Include

The free downloadable set from Big Little Feelings contains the basic emotion cards, a few potty-related feeling cards, and a simple reward chart template. The paid version adds laminated versions, a larger sticker sheet, and a parent guide PDF that walks through the daily routine. The parent guide is worth reading even if you do not buy the paid version, because it explains the philosophy behind the method in more detail than the product description does. The files are typically delivered as PDFs through your account dashboard after purchase or download. Printing them at home on standard cardstock works fine. If you do not have a home printer, a local copy shop will produce decent results for a few dollars. Lamination is optional but recommended if you plan to keep the materials around for a second or third child.

A Realistic Timeline

With the Big Little Feelings approach, most children show consistent daytime dryness within two to four weeks if they are started between twenty-four and thirty-six months. That is the window where the emotional literacy pieces actually connect with the physical readiness. Before twenty-four months, the child usually lacks the cognitive ability to link the feeling cards to their own bodily states. After thirty-six months, some children have already developed strong habits around where they go, and unlearning those habits takes longer than teaching from scratch. Nighttime training is a separate issue entirely. The Big Little Feelings materials do not address this, and they should not. Nighttime dryness is governed by hormone development and bladder capacity, not by emotional awareness. Do not expect the emotion cards to help with nighttime accidents. They will not. That comes later, usually between three and five years old, and sometimes not until the child is six. There is no shortcut for that. The real value of this method is not that it produces faster results than other approaches. It is that it produces results without turning potty training into a power struggle. The emotion cards give you an exit ramp when the child resists. Instead of pushing harder, you pivot to a feeling. Instead of negotiating a sticker, you ask which card matches how they feel right now. It sounds simple. It is. But simplicity is rare in potty training.