not relaxed enough on the potty?

[mercii]

I've been working with my 22 month for a few months now with potty-training, in a very relaxed, non-pushy way.  She has been showing a lot of signs that she is ready. She tells me when she pees or poos and often asks to sit on the potty. Well, we have spent a couple of times with no diaper just to try to get it down, but she can't seem to relax enough on the potty -- she has never actually peed in it. She sits down for a couple seconds and then wants to pop right up again. I encourage her to sit on it a little longer and ask her if she can pee -- she will concentrate for half a second and then seem surprised and exclaim as if maybe she started to -- but nothing actually happens.  Very often she will get up and then have an accident a minute later, which makes her very upset. I never pressure her and just say in a happy voice, "Oh don't worry, it's ok, we can try again later!" I know she is still quite young, so I'm not really worried about it. She just seems to want to learn, and I don't know how to help her. Is there some kind of secret or do I just need to wait a little longer?

[JessB]

My 13 month old started sitting on the potty about a month ago, and now she uses it successfully about half the time.  She also doesn't like to sit on the potty for long enough sometimes.  In order to get her to stay on the potty long enough, we had to move it to the living room and turn on the cartoons.  Also, we give her a favorite book to read when it is potty time.

A good time to put her on the potty is as soon as she wakes up from nap time. That's when my daughter has the most success with potty time.  Good luck!  :) 

[July09Mama]

A book or song might help. What ultimately worked best for our dd was for us to keep her neked and just watch her really carefully for a few days and try to get the potty to her when we saw her start to go. Once she did it a few times, she seemed to make the connection with what she was feeling her body doing and then what happened. From there, she pretty much took over on her own. Good luck!