Going diaper free and .....

[PeachBaby]

About 2 weeks ago, I decided to have DS (19 months) go from wearing diapers to being diaper free all day long while at home. Within 2 days, he started going to the potty all on his own! At first I was prompting him whenever I saw that he needed to go, but as we progress, he is starting to initate most of his pees.... I'd say it's currently about 75% of the time that he initiates going himself. He is successful at using the potty for pees about 95% of the time; only had about 2 pees on the floor accident. (We are still working on poo.... he still needs prompting to go to the potty for that.)

However, I notice that if I do put on a diaper, he will soil it. He knows the potty sign, but he will only sign occasionally after he has soiled the diaper. More often, he will not even sign at all and just go about in his soiled diaper unless I ask him if he needs to go potty. Is there anything I should (or could) be doing at this point to get him to go to the potty while he wears diapers? (I use cloth diapers if at home and disposables when going out.)

Thanks!

[Skinjob]

Have you gone diaper-free since this post? How is it going?

Signed,
A Fellow ECer.

[Tdogs-mom]

Ya, how is it going? I've come to a common place w/ DS. (refer to Regression over 8 months if you are intrested)

[PeachBaby]

Still going about the same since the last post. We do mostly diaper-free at home during the day, occasionally putting on cloth diapers if I am taking a break from that. I put DS in disposables overnight. If we go out, I put diapers on.

But I just had an idea today that I will start tomorrow:

every time *I* need to use the bathroom, I will make a big show of telling DS that I need to go to the potty and tell him that I first need to pull down my clothes before I sit on the potty. Then I will take him with me to the bathroom so he can hopefully get the idea. I thought maybe if DS can *see* me everytime doing this, he may catch on. I hope it works! Even if it doesn't work out for my DS, maybe it might work for anyone else's kid.

[boigrrrlwonder]

To be honest, my daughter thought of the diaper as a potty - if we just used diapers when she was out, she would soil diapers when we were out and be completely fine at home. For us, we just completely ditched the diapers. There were a few accidents, but it was short lived and then were completely done at 18 months.

[Skinjob]

Originally Posted by PeachBaby

every time *I* need to use the bathroom, I will make a big show of telling DS that I need to go to the potty and tell him that I first need to pull down my clothes before I sit on the potty. Then I will take him with me to the bathroom so he can hopefully get the idea. I thought maybe if DS can *see* me everytime doing this, he may catch on. I hope it works! Even if it doesn't work out for my DS, maybe it might work for anyone else's kid.

I think an open door policy is a great idea. Monkey see, monkey do!

[PeachBaby]

Yay! Tonight DS said "pee pee" to me and so we went to the potty where he pulled down his pants and then took his diaper off by himself (I helped just a bit, when his pants/diaper got stuck). Then he sat on the potty and peed!

Then the next time, he did the same, saying "poo poo" and we went through the routine again and he made a poop in the potty!

I was a bit surprised because we have been a bit more busier than usual, so I wasn't able to focus on this as much as I had intended, but am so glad DS is getting the idea!

[Mama Rana]

I started my DS diaper free around 14 months [I had done some EC with him when he was younger, but.... um, yeah, anyway]. As long as his bum was bare, he used the potty exclusively, even through a bout of diarhea. But if I put pants on him, he'd lose the sensation or something. Split crotch pants were ok, so that's what we did for a LONG time for at home, but out and about, we always had to use diapers. I hate to tell you this, but I'm talking another year, year and a half or more. It just took him that long to get past the diaper mentality since he'd been in diapers so long before that, ya know?

Good luck!