How to end diaper change battles forever! 

By Karen Braveheart

Sophia age 1.5 months (don’t tell her I used this pic! Haha)

In this blog, you’ll learn how to turn the most stressful situation into a loving moment by getting your toddler to work with you and not against you for their diaper changes.

As parents of littles, we’ve all been there. Your sweet baby that would smile and coo with you and stay still while changing their diaper woke up one day and suddenly turned into a precocious toddler overnight. Like a mini Hulk!

Now they refuse to sit still for even a second while you try to change their diaper and become totally resistant to your attempts to change them.

My sweet first baby girl, Sophia, was around 1 year old when she stopped sitting still and started resisting diaper changes. I had no idea this was a thing as a first time mom!

What happened to my sweet baby angel Sophia?

To learn more about how to meet your child where their brain is at, read my blog entitled "The secret to successful discipline: Meet your child where their brain is at" 

Sophia age 12 months

They’re learning about their bodies and asserting their independence.

Once you understand it it will be so easy for you to connect with them on their level and this is the key to turning a stressful situation into a loving moment.

Realizing where their brain is at is NOT

Your kid is being bad

Or being disrespectful

Or needs to listen to me because I’m the parent

Or I’m gonna hold them down (which is the worst thing you can do!)

There’s a much easier way to turn this stressful situation into a loving moment. Every single time!

Here’s how it works

Here’s where the self worth brain building happens

Your kid will ask you to do it again!

They'll want to mimic you and make their own hat

They’ll learn all kinds of things like gravity- how did that fall?

How did mom do that?

I repeated this 100s of times with my kids. It never gets old and you can continuously update the fun with different variations

Play peek a boo behind the clean diaper

Ask your kid what type of hat they want for their head

Ask them to say ahh ahhh ahhh choo!

Or say ahh ahh ahh then leave off the choo part. They won’t stop giggling. Ask them to say choo after you

Hand them a closed, clean diaper and have them try and open it

The possibilities to personalize this trick and make your own fun are endless

They’ll never tire of this fun trick. It will become your thing that they look forward to at diaper changes

The loving moments will keep on coming

• Change them standing up

You’ll get used to wiping them clean in this position. I used to do it in my minivan on the go a lot.

• Hand them the Adi plate to use as a fun, leaning tool 

Ask how many eyes does Adi have? What color are they? Shape? Do you see a fish? Teach them about penguins. They eat fish-Do you eat fish? Talk to them about fun penguin facts. They’ll be so into playing with Adi while u quickly change them.



Justin at age 3 with his Adi plate 🥰

• Ask your toddler for help

This will redirect their focus to learning and exploring which they LOVE




Hand them wipes and ask your kid to get one out. You may have it open the top of the package for them and show them how to get one out



Thank them and tell them that you’re using the wipe in them that they helped get out!



They will love the sense of accomplishment, independence and praise (self worth building!)



If you didn’t have enough time to change them, then simply occupy them again. Close up the wipes package and ask them to open it and grab a wipe all by themselves



Then you’ll have enough time to quickly change them as they are concentrating on learning a new skill



You can still praise them for their help and their tenacity in working to open the wipes, whether they were actually able to open it or not. (self worth building)

I remember being at a friend’s house, with her wiggly daughter, and she was struggling to keep her down on her changing table with her right hand. As she reached over to grab a diaper with her left, I saw my friend getting mad and stressed out. She turned to me and was like- this is impossible!

She asked me how I handled it, and I told her I had figured out that if you put fun in it and occupy them, it’s super easy!

I shared my tips with her just as I’ve shared them with you. I played peek a boo with her daughter as she changed her and it was so easy!

From that day on, she put fun in the diaper changes, moved diaper changes to the floor, and never had a problem again. Whoo hoo!

Justin with his big bros pants on that are too long. I was clearly sleep deprived when I got him dressed that am

Note: I am in no way advocating for use of a sippy cup. My reference here is about my own kids who used them together with cups with a hard spout, cups with a straw, and regular cups. There’s recent literature that talks about how a sippy cup may impede proper speech development. Please make your own educated choice that’s best for you and your child.