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Originally Posted by Shami  Tankgirl-
Thanks for all of the ideas. I will def think about it. I never did ec. Dd initiated pottying on her own around 18 months. I followed her cues. I do have three options for her at home. A little free standing potty, the big potty, or the insert for the big potty. I might be ok with the pee in the tub, but peeing every where at any time...hmmm, I don't know. How long will you let your child do that? I mean is there an age limit. I don't want a five year old peeing outside, anywhere at anytime.
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Oh, they stop doing it on their own as their natural sense of privacy kicks in. We western folks would be astonished at traditional communities in China, say, where that's exactly what young kids do -- anytime, anywhere, on the streets, whatever... Nobody worries that they're going to keep doing it as they get older. We might not appreciate the non-hygienic appearance of that, but the point of it is, that even in a culture where it's freely permitted all the time, it still naturally evolves into a private-bathroom thing as they get older.
When we would have her pee in a parking lot, was when she was still quite young (like, toddler and younger -- we did EC). Maybe there hadn't been a public toilet available, or she'd resisted it, or only suddenly gave us a signal that she needed to pee, etc etc. Our preference was to use a public toilet or the portable potty, the parking lot pee was a backup plan.
Running around in the back yard -- you will see 5yo boys doing that ALL THE TIME, no matter HOW they were potty trained heh... And it's not like she's stopping to squat every five minutes. Sometimes she would come inside to pee, sometimes she would pee outside in the grass or the rocks -- that's still preferable to peeing in a diaper to my mind! This summer, she will be 3.5yo, so I suspect she will be doing this less than last year already. Last year, she was quite well "trained", could do the whole process on her own, but would still have misses when she got distracted. So we were fine with letting her pee wherever she would cooperatively pee, rather than trying to force the issue to be ONLY where we specified. As much as possible, we encouraged the regular potty or toilet -- offering it first. But when she'd go through those moody phases and refused, then we were happy to offer her alternatives.
Over time, as she's gotten older, she's become more refined and more attuned. I think she recognizes that her big brother and her cousins and the grownups do NOT pee in the sink, or in the grass, or on the rocks (but maybe in the shower
), and naturally she will fall in line with the general... er...
flow of how the family works in that respect. Misses are now VERY rare (and generally related to her playing with water lol), she hasn't needed a bathtub pee in I don't know how long (it's been long enough that I no longer remember the last time)... Hubby still tries to get pee-in-the-rocks out of her before we go somewhere in the car, but I'm rolling my eyes at him now because she actually just went 20 minutes ago in the house, on her own... and we know we can trust her to 'hold it' for a good length of time so we don't have to panic in the car.
So I guess this is a very long-winded way of saying... Yeah there's an age limit, but it happens pretty naturally. The phase of being so fascinated with their peeing that alternative things like peeing outside to keep their interest and attention and motivation, is (relatively) short-lived. Before long peeing (with control) is just old hat, no big deal, part of their day, and they gladly start locking you out of the bathroom instead......
