what is the next step for a 2 year old?? need advice!!

[kfillmore]

We have, in a relaxed way, ECed since birth. Now I feel we are stuck and for the very first time I feel a bit discouraged. I feel like we are at the same place non-ECed 2 year old might be. DD has 100% pooped in toilets/potties for well over a year. Pee is another issue. At home and naked she usually pees in the potty. Occasionally she doesn't get there in time. And several times a week she goes on the floor not near a potty (with no apparent attempt to get there). Outside naked she goes all over the place. When we are out she will say if she has to poo. And will sometimes tell me if she wets her diaper. She will go, usually, when we give her the opportunity, which we try to a lot. BUT she very rarely tells us that she NEEDS to go and then will go in her diaper (even at home if we just got home and she still has a diaper on). We do occasionally take very short trips in the car or stroller with only underwear. We had a very brief period where she did tell us or sign thatr she needed to potty. That was 1/2 to a year ago.

HOW do I get her to tell me that she has to go/before she goes??!!

p.s. When do kids not have to go pee at night? I take her once or twice to the potty (at the foot of the bed). I take her because having to pee usually wakes her up and then she will pee in the bed. She sleeps naked.

thanks!

[sabetts]

We are in a very similar situation with our 2yo. We've been catching poops no problem since 8 months with very few complete misses and some partials. It feels like she's been on a potty strike for pees since 6 months. Still she usually tells us when she's wet.

My plan at this point is to just go diaper free as much as possible, give her a chance to pee when it's been a long time, and hope that she'll figure it out. What else can you do?

[emmaegbert]

we switched to undies a while ago, but I'd say my newly 2yo DD sounds pretty similar. She always poos in the toilet, tells me if she needs to, tells me some of the time if she pees and also has misses if I don't take her often enough. She only VEEEERRRRRy rarely just takes herself to the potty. Lately she's had quite a few misses on her way to the potty so I'm hopeful that she's transitioning to more independence. She always says when she is peeing though and is very aware of that, and very uncomfortable with it.

When my son was potty learning I always kept a potty in the room with us. It did help him remember to go (and helped give him time to get there). I would say you could try that, and just try switching to undies at least most of the time, and deal with the wetting. IME kids don't like to be wet so it gives them some signals about what is going on.

As for nighttime- I am kind of flummoxed. I posted about it a few days ago. DD has been dry at night probably 95% of the time for over a year until about 2 weeks ago and now she's wetting almost every other night- and NOT awakening. Weird. IME there is a HUGE range for nighttime dryness. My son who was out of daytime diapers at 21m only recently stopped wearing diapers at night- and he is 6. I do remember that around age 2 he started sleeping more heavily and after months of awakening and asking to be taken to the toilet, he started wetting almost every night. SIGH.

[turtlemamameg]

I agree with Emmaegbert, we switched to undies about 2 mos ago  as a sort of last resort attempt to get our DD interested in communicating about the potty again after after a drawn-out regression and DD has since taken a turn toward independence.  The underwear seemed to give her more awareness.  She was too used to the diaper catching everthing.  Undies can be a bit messier with a miss, but she has way fewer misses now anyway. 

Also, maybe instead of trying to get her to tell you before she has to go, begin to help her learn how to take herself.  Instead of telling my DD to "tell me if she had to go", I now tell her "if you have to go, go straight to the potty and go.  When she does tell me she has to go, I let her lead the way to the potty and I coach her to pull her own pants down and sit herself down.  And since I started doing all that, she has begun to take herself way more frequently. 

[sabetts]

Thanks turtlemamameg. We encouraged our daughter to run to the potty when she had to poo or had pooped and it's probably why she's so good with poops. With pee it's over so fast there's almost no point in running. Or so I thought! I think using this strategy with pees (even if she's already gone) may be the key. That and switching to undies. It's more or less the recommended practice in the book Diaper-free Before 3, which I just picked up.

[mtbmomma]

We were in a similar place with my DD, now 2.5, a couple months ago.  What finally helped us was getting rid of all diapers during the day, these were confusing her, and never telling her to go to the potty.  I would occasionally ask her if we were going out, but really I had to give up all my control and let her figure out on her own when she needed to go.  We had a few additional accidents, but then something just clicked with her and we haven't been doing great now.  I think we had gotten into a bit of a power struggle, since I didn't always trust that she would know when she had to go.  Once I turned over the lead to her, everything just started to run more smoothly.  I also didn't realize how long she can go between pees, like 4 hours or so.  That is longer then I usually  wait, but works well for her.  Good luck, I hope this helps.

[emmaegbert]

well I posted above a few weeks ago... we are now trying to focus more on independence with DD and she seems to be responding to that, which is nice to see. like I said we were in f/t undies for a long time, but misses sort of come and go.

As for night, I just started taking her around 10 or 11 before I go to sleep, and it seems to have solved the problem. She basically pees without fully awakening. Still she wears a diaper though.