Looking for potty training advice or tips

[SilverMoon010]

Anyone have any experiences on how they went about potty training?  My son is 2 1/2 (he'll be 3 in April).  I tried potty training about 2 months ago but decided he wasn't ready yet, so I retired the potty for a little while.  He still doesn't really tell me he went poopy or pee-pee in his diaper yet.  I normally have to ask.  He's getting closer to doing that, though, because sometimes he will tell me.  I read the book "How to Pottty Train Boys," but thought I would ask you mamas so I could hear real-life experiences :-) I would love to hear different tips/advice on it and how you went about it, how long it took, etc. TIA!

[Nicole730]

My son also turns 3 in April.  I started potty training him last May.  Before he showed any signs of "readiness", except a curiosity about the potty.  When we first started he was peeing little bits 15 times a day!  It took a little less than a week before he learned to hold and control his urine.  We just stripped him naked and put him on the potty a lot and did lots of praise.  And he got a m&m if he peed in the potty.  By July we had stopped giving any sort of incentive for peeing in the potty.  He will still pee on the floor sometimes and needs lots of reminders to use the potty.  If he is naked though, he will always remember to use the potty.  He just started pooping on the potty the last few weeks and I'm loving it!   We still do a diaper for bedtime.  I remind him every night to let us know if he wakes up and has to pee, but he hasn't yet.

I was actually just telling a friend today I think it would be so much harder to start now because he is so much more independent now and refuses to do a lot more than he did at 25 months old. 

I guess, my best advice, is just get him naked from the waist down and try to get him on the potty as much as possible!  Good luck!

[amahrey]

we started three weeks ago and my son is 2.5.  we had a potty chair for a while in the bathroom and he has been sitting on it before bathtime each night for the past few months.  that was the only time he used it and i never pushed or really asked him about it other times of the day.  i figured he would just get used to it that way. 

three weeks ago i started telling him that he was going to stop using diapers and going to start using the potty all the time.  he wasn't really showing any signs of being ready (other than using it at night) and really couldn't care less if his diaper was wet or dirty.  but, i'm going to have another babe in may and i wanted to try to get the potty situation started by then.

day 1 he got up and i put him in undies (i bought like 25 pairs) and then normal clothes.  i showed him a poster chart i made (i just divided up a paper into colums of 7 for each day of the week) and showed him that he would get a sticker every time he used the potty.  he thought that was awesome because he never gets stickers.  then, i pretty much just kept telling him every 5 min (I'm not exaggerating) "tell mama when you need to use the potty - ok?" and i would make sure he made eye contact and said ok.  he had a ton of accidents the first day but he also peed in the potty a lot.  he started telling me when he was wet and i would just change him and let him try to go in the potty and repeat.  it took 2 weeks for him to poo in the potty the majority of the time, but he rarely has accidents any more. 

i put him in pull ups for naps (we call them nap pants) and diapers for sleeping.  surprisingly, he is often dry after naps or in the morning even though he NEVER was previously.  i'm not going to really worry about nighttime.  i figure eventually he will just always wake up dry and i will put him in undies for bed then.  i don't want to change wet sheets at night. 

i hope that helps a little- good luck!