calling all "early" (mine is 21 mo.) potty trainers: gradual or cold-turkey off diapers?

[summerbabe]

Hi  mamas, I will try to be concise here...I trained my 5 y.o. with no problems--he was fully trained during the day at 2.5 and night trained about 3 mo. before his 3rd birthday.  I used a gradual, whatever approach and it happened over a few months.  Painless, no anxiety on anyone's part.  So now my 2nd one is 21 months.  If I were smart, I would have just trusted myself as a mother since I did this without a hitch once (I'm one of the few out of all my friends who had no problems, in fact!).  Instead, I got myself freaked out over 2 things:  1, DS2 is more contrary than DS1, and 2). a couple of my friends in the meantime have had BIG issues with power struggles with kids over 3.5.  I don't want to be there, so I thought I'd give "early" training a go.  He was showing signs such as going behind stuff to poop and telling me he had pooped in his diaper.  Now I am on day 4 of a one-fell-swoop method and while he has shown some progress, mostly he is not getting it yet, and clearly this is not going to happen in 3-7 days.   The method I'm doing is an all-or-nothing approach, and I can give it the rest of the week, but after that, we need to go back to our normal life, so I don't see being able to go diaper free yet.  The author says it's confusing to use diapers sometimes and not others (although it does allow for naps and nighttime diapers).  So I'm in the middle of this process and I'm faced with a) abandon this and go back to diapers, trying the cold-turkey approach at a later time.  b). do what I did successfully with my older son, a more gradual, nuanced approach. 

Option B feels much better to me.  I don't do well with structured stuff,so I'm not sure why I thought this one would be a good fit for us.  I see anxiety in myself and my son which was completely absent in the process with my older one.  But now I have this paradigm in my head, saying you're just confusing the kid if you're telling them to use the potty sometimes and putting a diaper on them at other times, and if you do this you're headed for trouble.  Theoretically, that makes sense,so I thought hey, maybe i just got lucky with my first one.  On the other hand, I think it's confusing to pretend that using the potty is not a big deal, just what we do now, when you really do feel time pressure because if you do the cold-turkey method and commit to no diapers, then it HAS TO work or you can't resume normal life!  I think cold-turkey is a great strategy for lots of people, but maybe just not for me.  If mom is relaxed and we go about our day, and we practice potty at home, and when we go out we use a diaper because it's hard to get to the potty quickly (just like we use one at night because we can't wake up to pee), then isn't that just fine? 

I really think I need to depart from this method and do my own thing...I guess I just need to be reminded that plenty of people use a gradual approach to weaning off diapers and do just fine, with kids trained well before age 3?  Thanks in advance for your thoughts. 

Edited by summerbabe - 1/24/12 at 9:41am

[Faither]

Hey there. We're doing the gradual approach with our just 2 year old. We're expecting #2 sometime in early March so we're not rushing anything. I would love for DD to just have the idea down before baby comes so that's not a struggle later. Of course we're in a different situation but I totally expect regression after baby is born. We felt a gradual approach was better than trying to "force" her into anything.

But in the end, you know what you want to do. Go for it. You're not the only one. And hey, less accidents is awesome and IMO more worth it for everyone involved then trying to push your child into something they might not be ready for yet.  Good Luck!

[Chloe'sMama]

DD1 showed signs of being ready at 20 months and I went with it.  We did rewards and she trained herself overnight.   DD2 is alerting me when she is going, but HATES the potty. 

I say trust your mommy instincts about it and go with what will work best for your child.

[cloudbutterfly]

We started "potty learning" at 6 months, so our process was very gradual, but at about 20 or 21 months we got to the point of trying to go without diapers.  We had one accident free night before an accident the second night told me it just wasn't worth it to try no diapers at night yet, and we were in undies for quite awhile until he shifted his sleep schedule earlier and started needing to go potty in the middle of his preschool class, and he's afraid of the bathroom there (I accidentally sprayed him with water on the first day, oops).  At that point, I realized I'd been too stressed out having him in undies out of the house, since he'd gone from begging to go potty in public restrooms to resisting it, so we do pull up diapers when we're out and about and go naked at home or wear sweat pants without undies.  Since backing off, he's eventually gotten to the point where he tells me when he needs to go when we're outside of the house again.  I don't end up pressuring him to go because I don't want him to have an accident, so we've been able to get back to a place where he's inwardly motivated to progress on this.  I'm not too surprised...less stress has pretty much always been the way to move forward any time we've had a potty setback.

[Youngfrankenstein]

I tried and tried to potty train my oldest before he was ready.  He was 2.5.  He could "do it", he just didn't.  I got mad, I tried rewards, nothing worked.  He trained right at 3 years.  My second I didn't do much other than have potties available and he trained right at 3 also. Same for my dd.

So I know kids can learn earlier, but some won't and that's ok.  And while I wouldn't really want to deal with a 3.5 year old that isn't trained, it can and does happen and it's no one's fault so don't be too swift to judge that. 

[crunchy_mommy]

I guess we did a kind of gradual approach here. DS is about to turn 3 and has been 'potty-trained' for about 6mos. I put it in quotes because I still don't feel it's 100% -- he has been in underwear full-time (night & day) since 2.5 and rarely has accidents, but it's still more parent-led at this point, and I feel being truly 'trained' means it is completely child-led.

Anyway, up to age 2.5 we kind of went back & forth with diapers, underwear, and bare-bottom (and we did some EC when he was a baby but he hated it). Sometimes he did great being bare-bottomed, and other days it just seemed way too much for him to handle, so we put him in diapers. Often we put him in diapers while out & about, because he wouldn't use a portable potty and we weren't always close to bathrooms. I found he needed to pee VERY often until that 30-month mark -- he'd go several times an hour -- so I don't think he had full bladder control yet, even though sometimes he could hold it 'til we got to the bathroom. Once he was able to go at least an hour between pees and not feel fearful or emotional about the potty, we put him in underwear full-time & never looked back. He was also able to stay dry at night around the same point.

He has some social & emotional issues/delays and I suspect he trained later than many kids because of this. I think you will know when it's time to give up the diapers completely, and it may be next month or it may be next year.

I have two friends who've had their DD out of diapers since 20mos or so. They are still having many accidents a day now, 8 & 12mos later. I suppose it's fine to just change clothes frequently, but IMO it would make more sense to take a break & put them back in diapers for a bit 'til they are more ready or get through this stage. Both used a 3-day approach & consider their DDs to be potty-trained though, despite the frequent accidents. But they are happy with their approach & it works for them.

[Greenlea]

When my son turned 2 we started potty training.  I tried leaving him naked on the bottom, didn't work.  I tried pull-ups, didn't work.  Finally I just put him in big boy underwear and it worked like a charm.  So technically we went cold-turkey on the diapers.  He was day-time potty trained by 28 mths.  He'll be 3 in March and we are still working on night time.

[JudiAU]

We do it the Diaper Free Before 3 verision which is good old fashioned somewhat scheduled potty learning. I'd call it a mix. When we begin potty learning we learn to sit on the potty at regular intervals like when we wake up, mid-morning break, before lunch, before nap etc. I put potties everywhere so we can get there fast and it isn't a big deal. Potty snacks are fine. So are books. So are accidents. I dont' immediately switch to underpants but do after a week or two. With my first I also used really lousy pocket diapers at the same time. I swtich to imse vimse training pants which minimize the hassle of clean ups. My son needed a long time of being parent-led and reminders until he was fully potty independent but at the same time, he never had accidents. My daughter caught on faster and gets really annoyed if someone tells her to go potty. She was in regular underpants, fully trained, before 2.

I think potty learning is much MUCH easier with stronger willed and/or independent kids if you do it very young. When very young, they feel like they have control. When older, it becomes a power struggle.

Other things I really think help: good quality comfortable underwear (most is terrible and uncomfortable), car potty, and never, ever using pull ups for the parent's convenience. If you are out and about, you don't use pull ups. You take the child to the potty before, during, and after your trip if necessary. You use the car potty every time you get in the car if you need to. But you never, ever put your kid in a position that they need to pee on themselves to relieve their bladder. Accidents happen sure, but you as the parent, should not cause the accident.

[sosurreal09]

We went cold turkey no dipes even when out (just carried extra clothes) We did the diaper free in 3 days approach...http://www.babycenter.com/0_potty-training-in-three-days-or-less_10310078.bc

DD is 27 m/o and been out of dipes completely (even overnight) since 21 m/o

[myfairbabies]

We went cold turkey at 19 months using the 3 day method (underwear, telling the kid to tell you when they have to go, but you never ask if they have to go). This was a year ago and I am so happy we did it this way because dd is a much happier person without diapers. She LOVES being naked and HATED diapers, so it was totally miserable for both of us. I think it worked so well for her in part because of those things. She was out of diapers at night within 2 weeks of that. She has also only ever had 3 public pee accidents and has never had a poop accident at home or otherwise. She wets the bed about once every month or 2, but we have waterproof sheets so it's not a big deal. She has had a couple of short regressions, but they were always wetting her pants at home so I didn't mind that much, and they all happened within the first few months.

[jes h]

Seems like many kids have that one trigger that makes things click.  For DS#1 it was wearing undies.  For DS#2 it was using the big potty. 

We've potty trained 2 boys (individually) both at 24 months.  Like the OP described, we wanted to hit this before 3 yrs..  Am I GLAD we did.  My 3 year old is sooooo incredibly stubborn; I don't think there is any way this would have been successful now. 

We did the all-out method and stayed home for about a week with no outings.  We put tarps down for about a week,  went bare-bottomed, and set a timer for the first few days.  Both started asking to go by day 5.  Neither were super interested in the potty when we started, but got interested as soon as we did.  Even though they took a couple days to get the idea, there was huge improvements each day.   Both took it lighthearted and had fun with it.  By the end of the week we could go out again, with back up clothes, and by 2 weeks they were both solid.

I kind of got the idea that by the time we had gotten through a week, they had sort of forgotten the diaper routine and were set in the potty routine, so didn't even think of going back.  It probably helped that neither liked diaper changes and liked the control of the potty.  If they hadn't been getting it by the first 5 days, we would probably have gone all the way back to diapers and tried again later.  

A few days before, and throughout the process we  watched this video from Flight of the Conchords a lot.  It has nothing to do with toileting, but it sounds like they are singing 'rock the potty'  Boys thought it was HILARIOUS!  We talked about 'rocking the potty' and used that for going potty.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNxGym3SrkI.   DS also like this one   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzZTS00HvPM  (as in, fresh and so clean undies).

So, personally, I like the all-out method for my own sanity; and it worked for the boys.  However, obviously other people prefer and do the other way.  Of course, you want to take your child into account, but also have to go with a method that won't drive you nuts, either, or else it will be difficult to be positive through it. 

Now, if I could get DS to not think of his thicker pull-up style cloth night time undies as 'the undies I can go potty in' that would be awesome... We went back to diapers for a while.  Now we are back to the undies, and things are a little drier.  At least now I think it is only legitimate sleeping pee...  DS#2 was dry at night about a month after totally getting day time.  Something in his brain/bladder clicked.

so I edited this down, and it still is longer than I intended.  I can really ramble about potty training and breastfeeding.  sorry!

Edited by jes h - 1/29/12 at 8:21pm

[JoyFilled]

DD started asking to using the toilet at 18 months.  We used the toilet first thing in the morning and last thing at night from 19 months on but she continued to wear diapers and I didn't ask her if she wanted to use the toilet during the day - she asked.  Eventually she was dry all day and all night so at 22 months we pulled the diapers.  We maybe had 1 accident a week for the next 3 months but she was "train" before she was 2.

So I vote gradual.