Potty-training and Public Transport

[TreyaJames]

If this question is answered in another thread, please let me know.  My DD is 2.5 years old.  With regards to using the potty, she knows what to do, how to do it and is getting good at telling us when she needs to go.  Here is my issue: we live in an Asian country where we take public transport (which means some of our journeys last >45 minutes).  Therefore, I have to rely on public bathrooms and let me tell you, I do not want to take the little miss into some of those subway bathrooms.  She knows the drill of "Don't touch ANYTHING except Mumma", but is it really a bad thing if I put a diaper on her to go out and about on a trip that I know will take longer than she can hold?  I do take her to the bathroom if she says she needs to go regardless of what kind of underwear she has on and if I know the bathroom is halfway decent.  Also, how do you all handle naps and nighttime?  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

P.S. We never made that big a deal about diapers or undies.  Her diapers are the pull-up kind and she refers to them as "sleepy-time undies", so it is not a question of damaging her self-esteem.  Often I will ask her permission to wear them and if she only wants "fabric undies", I let it go and deal with it.

[brennan]

In my experience (with dd and the kid that I nannied) there comes a point where they will stop being okay with wetting themselves, even if its in a diaper.  We live an hour away from a grocery store and usually spend the whole day in town so we deal with a lot of nasty bathrooms when out.  We do the same things, don't touch anything except mommy, we wash our hands very well and I usually pack hand sanitizer in case its an especially gross bathroom.  You might be able to get away with it for a little while longer, and the day when she stops being okay with wetting herself she might be able to hold it longer. 

[lifeguard]

45 minutes is not a long time. I personally would approach it more by having her go right before we leave (make it part of the routine of leaving for everyone to try to pee) & then again when we got to where we were going. Could you carry a fold-up potty seat with you so if you do need to go somewhere less clean then you'd like you could use that. Or even disposable wipes so you could wipe down the toilet seat yourself.

For naps we actually went diaperless long before we started formal pling. I noticed ds was normally dry after naps & I felt it was good for him to have more nakey time (especially in the winter where that is harder) so I started having him nap naked with a towel under him.

Nighttime I anticipated diapers for MUCH longer but as soon as I switched him to underwear during the day he wanted to switch at night so we did & it's gone very well. I won't pretend we don't have accidents but they're infrequent.