How did you get your toddler to potty train? - Page 2

[not_telling]

For those of you who have done whole day(s) of nakedness, have you had pee or poop get on your furniture? I just keep picturing poop on the sofa or on the living room rug (which is relatively nice compared to other rugs in our house). Or poop in the bed. Or poop in the high chair.

Etc.

[mamadelbosque]

I finally got sick of changing poopy diapers and dealing with horrible nasty infected diaper rash (cause' he'd poop and not tell us or give *ANY* sign that he'd done so, and thus sit in it for hours till somebody noticed that he smelled bad, or that it'd just been a while since we changed him...), and so made him run around w/o pants on for a solid month when we were home. We figured out after a while that if you put undies on him he'd pee in them like nothing but just pants were OK. 5 or 6 months later, he still goes 'commando' probably 80% of the time as undies still give him issues.

ETA: it was amazing really - he never peed or pooped on our floor, ever. He'd hold it till you told him to go potty, so he was obviously 'ready'... he just had/has issues with undies feeling like a diaper...

[PatchChild]

I wish I had better advice. Shortly after DS turned two, he walked up to me and said, "I pee potty" and that was that. He spent about a week with no pants, just for my sanity while he perfected the potty thing. I was shocked that I wasn't needing to clean up all over the house. Fortunately, we have wood floors and tile floors so the coulee of oopses were easier to deal with.

Can you be outside a lot where accidents are less of an issue?

[Luke's mama]

around my son's 2nd bday, we started the naked time and potty learning, and made such small progress!! It took days before he even reacted to peeing and longer about pooping. And yes, it is a mess, and if you have to watch EVERY SECOND in my experience--so stressful! What are you supposed to do if you need to cook or something and can't watch them every second? He was not getting it after some weeks and I couldn't take the stress anymore (he refuses to sit on the potty) so we went back to diapers. He did sometimes pee when I asked him, but only outside, and sometimes would pee like a dog against a tree or something, but not consistently. One time I found poop hidden in a Little People house--disgusting!!--after smelling it but not being able to find it for awhile. Still not exactly sure how it got in there. Anyway, I am just writing because I am not sure what to do at this pt. and am baffled because all of my parents' advice and various pediatricians (and the older generation in general) about how it is a snap to train kids if you just take off their diapers is NOT accurate in my experience! I can only figure that I waited too long and should have started around 18 mos, although DS was not verbal at that pt., or else that he is not ready yet. I guess we will figure it out eventually.

[Hannahkatiebell]

We are now potty trained, even through the night. DS is 30 months old, but we potty trained 24/7 starting at 28 months. We started peeing in the potty before bath and inbetween diapering at about 25 months. I put foam bath letters in the potty and told DS it would be really funny to put his pee-pee on the letters. Well, he did too apparently, and he did it. Afterwards, I sterilized the letters and we just did it over and over again for the next month or so. Then we did the lettrs only sometimes and then never.
We never used pull-ups, I would definitely advise against those as the two previous posters did.
Going number two, which we started working on in June was a different story. Required lots of waiting time on the potty and stratgeic planning, too. Gotta learn your babe's signals and get her on the potty quick.
DS was ready and thought it was soooo fun! We talked about it a lot, maybe too much, cause know he likes to joke about it a lot, and that I don't quite care for--the potty talk, you know.
Good luck! Have fun and she will too, I'm sure!

[RomanGoddess]

Originally Posted by angelachristin

my advice is WAIT until they are ready.

I tried with my son at 2 yo. He wanted NO part of it. He would scream if you even SUGGESTED the potty. Yet, he wanted to watch "Elmo's Potty Time" over and over; however, if you said "Want to try that?" He was like NO WAY. Others (like DH and MIL) wanted to press the issue with him but I said no...leave him alone. He will do it when he is ready.

About a week after he turned 3, he said to DH out of the blue, "Can I go peepee in the potty and wear big kid underwear?" and that was it. THAT WAS ALL, PEOPLE! He's been 100% potty trained ever since. NO accidents except one time when I think a fart gave him a bit more than he bargained for...LOL...but other than that...he's 100%. He wears regular underwear, not pullups. He is fine all night long, still cosleeps so believe me, I trust him big time! Fine when out and about. I never even have to remind him to go, he just goes when he's gotta, the only times I request that he tries to go are before leaving the house (although sometimes I forget and he's never ever had an accident) and before bedtime. It was SO EASY...all because he was ready.

This CAN work well. BUT 1) it means using diapers an extra year or so, and even if you're using cloth, there is a pollution factor (besides the fact that changing diapers containing adult poo is just plain gross and it's something that I want to have to do for as short a period of time as possible, and 2) it can backfire. I have enough friends whose kids, at 3.5, are still not potty trained and have developed a very strong will against anything potty or toilet. They'll say "mommy, i'm about to do a big poo and then you're going to have to change my diaper." I'm sorry but at that point, it's time to just TAKE OFF the diaper. Period.

I didn't do the child-centred "wait until she's interested" approach because my older DD is exactly the type who would have developed a will against potty training instead of growing more interested in it. Plus we were using disposables and I definitely did not want to continue filling landfills.

So 5 days after her 2nd birthday, we just took off her diaper - for good during all waking hours. DD was hopping mad. She begged for a diaper every time she peed herself.

I never made her sit on the potty or anything like that. I just said there were no more diapers and so she had a choice: pants or potty. No punishments if she went on the floor (wetting her pants was punishment enough for her) and no rewards if she went on the potty.

It took her 10 days to figure out that the potty wasn't so bad and then she was going regularly. There was the odd accident with poop for a few weeks but that went away on its own.

I should also mention that unlike what I have noticed with many late potty learners, DD never regressed.

[momasana]

We called an important serious family meeting. The three of us (DH, DS, me) sat on the couch and I told him (DS) that his diapers just didn't work anymore (we use cloth and the velcro on most of the covers had worn) so it was time to put them away and buy big kid underwear. After our "meeting" we drove to the store and let him pick out two new packs of undies. We had a few accidents here but he's done awesome ever since.

I think it helped to just sit him down and be real matter-of-fact about the who situation.