Dustin van de Sande is the father of Jasmijn, Sebas and Morris, and potty trained all three of them from around two and a half. It started with the same uncertainty most parents have: where to begin, how often, and what to do when it goes wrong.

From the family living room to a program

When friends asked about it and succeeded with the same approach, he wrote it down as a day-by-day program. That became Potty Training Box, founded in October 2018 in Oisterwijk, the Netherlands. More than 50,000 copies of the program have been sold since, through the shops in the Netherlands, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

For parents in the United States, the program is a video course: seven days in forty short videos, with the full handbook as a PDF, sticker cards and certificates. Each morning you watch that day’s videos, and you know what to do and what to say when it goes wrong. See the video course.

Reviewed by professionals

The method came out of practice, but it did not stay there. The program has been reviewed by a pediatric physical therapist and pelvic floor physical therapist, by urotherapists at a hospital bladder and bowel clinic, by a physician assistant, and by children’s coach Yvonne Trommelen of IQuniek.

Where his expertise ends

Dustin is not a doctor and not a child development specialist, and does not write as one. Where health is involved, such as constipation, stool withholding, recurring urinary tract infections or bedwetting past the age of six, the conversation belongs with your child’s pediatrician. Articles on this site point to sources such as HealthyChildren.org from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC for exactly that reason.

His experience is in the practice of that one week: what works, what you can reasonably expect, and how to keep going on the day it goes badly.