When will potty INDEPENDENCE start??!!

mama, it sounds frustrating. the only thing i can say is that my older two were very very different in terms of when they were fully independent. both were EC'd (later start, 9 mo and 6 mo). my oldest had more frequent misses until one day she just "got" it and virtually never had an accident or needed reminding again. i think she literally had 2 accidents ever again, one of which was like a year later. she was about 26 or 27 months and i remember the day it all just 'clicked.' she made a proclamation that she was a big kid and that was that.

DS, on the other hand, was reliably dry during the day for a looong time before i would honestly say he was independent. i stopped diapering him when he was, i dunno, 22 months? but i would say it's only been about 6-8 months since he is truly independent in terms of always making it to the bathroom of his own initiative without accidents and without me reminding him (he'll be 4 in July). we spent the interim period between 22 months and 3.25 years doing a dance where sometimes i'd have to offer 100% of the time, sometimes he'd initiate 100% of the time, and most of the time we were somewhere in between, where he'd sometimes tell me but other times not and if i was relying too heavily on him to initiate we'd have a string of accidents and i'd have to pick up responsibility again more heavily for a while. he was doing really well until i got pregnant (just after he turned 2) and we had a horrible couple of months, and we didn't get totally back on track until after the baby was born (3 months before he turned 3). of course we mostly didn't have misses even during that time because i was offering. but whenever i didn't it was miss city and it was very frustrating.

it was really frustrating feeling like we were so close and yet not quite there. but i also am soooo thankful that we were EC'ing because i very firmly feel that he would've been one of those kids that would've been a nightmare to potty train and wouldn't have been out of diapers until at least 4 yo if we had done it how most westerners do. as it was he was, to the outside view, independent before age 2. and never did he have poop misses after the age of abouta 15 months. so i am really grateful for EC.

i think your perception might be skewed because your older two were easy to PT. #3 probably would've been challenging no matter what. he will get it eventually, for sure. he might just be telling you right now that he's not ready for the responsibility yet. at least, that's what i felt my DS was trying to communicate when he was doing the same thing.

hang in there!!

Here are the things that got my dd "over the hump":
1. Grandma bought her some new panties (I snorted to myself at the waste...who needs panties at her age? She LOVED them and didn't want to pee in them. Grandma was right!)

2. I talked with my daycare provider (Kim) about how much she was fighting diapers as backup when it was time to go to daycare. Kim said she was willing to give it a whirl there and see what happened. We talked to my dd about it at the time telling her that we were going to leave it up to her to tell Kim when she needed to go potty. We told her we'd try it for a couple of weeks and if it worked, she wouldn't have to wear diapers at Kim's anymore.

3. After things worked so well at Kims house, I told her I was going to try the same thing at home. I would wait for her to tell me when she needed to go, so it was her job to let me know. I wasn't going to remind her any more--it was her body and her choice about when to use the potty. Then when she peed, I said "whoops, that caught you by surprise didn't it. That's okay, you can try again next time."

4. I backed completely off and stopped insisting that she use the potty when I offered. In fact, I tried to back off so much that I didn't offer at all and just left it up to her completely. And okay, I'll admit, I'm not perfect at holding the zen. I do offer the potty if we're about to get in the car, or if it's right before dinner, or if we're out at someone's house and it's been a while since she peed. But I alway respect a "no"...if she tells me she doesn't need to pee, the conversation is over. Occasionally I'll say, "okay, but we're about to get on the bus and there's no potty on the bus, so if you need to pee, now is a good time." The only time I insist that she uses the potty (which doesn't always work anyway) is if we were at someone else's house and hasn't peed in a while. (She's been reliable about telling me she has to poop for ages, so I don't have that to deal with)

And she's not perfect yet, but these things helped us make a HUGE step towards HER initiating instead of just US. Nowadays, we don't put diapers on her (and we are HUGE fans of diaper backup), we hardly ever ask her if she needs to use the potty (okay, "hardly ever" means only once or twice a day), and she takes herself almost all the time. We have a few accidents a week (all at home), and life is hugely more relaxed.

Good luck! Keep us updated!

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DS is 29 months (I think, I'm too tired to do the math haha) and I JUST started doing this the past few days (shocking, eh Carlyle? Thought it was my idea!) and it's going pretty well. He's in a mess of a place though, he keeps trying to become a "grad", but last time he had a run of amazing dryness my dad died a few days later, and now that he's trying it again, I'm really due to go into labor at any time now. So it's bound to fail, but I'm letting him experiment with it anyway, since it's good learning behavior even though we'll be back in diapers soon, I'm sure. He's a poop-regresser and I don't clean poopy undies well.

SO, I don't really have any advice, just wanted to say that you're not alone. We seem to have a slew of "late grads" around our kids ages on here right now. All kids are different. It is frustrating though, especially because there are so many other kids who have been in diapers full time and are potty trained by now! 2.5 years IS a long time to be doing EC. I've actually been thinking about how this will make EC different the next time around for us...being on the "18 month plan" for gradhood is very different than being on the 3 or 3 1/2 year plan, you know? DH and I generally just muse about how, if EC means he'll be potty trained as soon as he is able to be, he would have been crazy old to potty train if we hadn't done EC. But I'm trying to give him some more independence and see where it goes. I guess that might be easier because we completely expect him to regress when the new baby is born, so we have like, negative expectations for this stage.

Alright, I'm just rambling now. But know you're not alone! And good luck!

Alright, I've been thinking about this thread a ton, and since you haven't come back, I figured I'd write again LOL.

I too, am really glad you started this thread, cuz it's nice to see other toddlers in the same place as DS, despite lots of ECing. Makes me feel LOADS better, actually.

Are you thinking about this since you have another little one on the way? I know I'm sure I'll EC a little differently this time around since I'm kind of type A about these things, and it didn't get me anywhere fast with DS. I actually have had the same experience as you, where I've traditionally potty trained kids at this age (as a nanny, but it was pretty full time) and they didn't have this "I need you to take me based on the time" thing that DS has. I have wondered about that, like could EC have actually discouraged his independence because he knows I'm going to take him to the bathroom soon. He knows that. If he pees in his pants or diaper, I'm going to change it soon, so it's not like he's a traditionally diapered kid and he knows I'll change him in a few hours, you know? And I do find it frustrating sometimes, because I know he can tell me, he just doesn't bother. That said, I found "normal" potty training frustrating for the same reason, so maybe I just need to work on my patience for cleaning up puddles.

And since I just don't do well with fretting over these things, I just let him have 2 pairs of undies a day...the first time I just remind him to tell me when he has to go potty (which he doesn't) so he pees in those and tells me they're wet and wants to get them off fast (he has a new distaste for wet pants. Wet diapers aren't the same, and he never minded wet pants before.), and then the second pair I might take him more or suggest more urgently that he go to the bathroom. I figure there's learning there anyway. I struggle with it because he is starting to communicate with us about it with words (he's kind of a late bloomer in the speech department, but he's getting there) so I really want to encourage him! But, I relish the freedom that diapers give me from worrying incessently about when he's going to pee his pants, so I feel like if he's not the one telling me and I have to rely on myself to take him, I'd just rather have the backup. I mean, we're communicating, and he has maintained the control that he can completely pee on command, and he tells us when he has to poop, but it's not the same as him taking responsibility.

For me, I just don't want to make it a struggle. He's two, so there's plenty that he says no to throughout the day, and I don't have the energy to argue with him about it. (Is that sad?). So if he insists that No, he doesn't want to go to the bathroom, I don't take him. They're his pants, if he wants so desperately to pee in them, he can. He'll get there eventually...right?

Anyway, thanks for your post, you've given this pregnant lady lots to mull over in the last few days!

Thanks for all the support, Mamas.

I think the main issue my ds has is that he has ZERO self-motivation to use the potty/toilet/tree/whatever! And I worry that the reason why he lacks self-motivation is because he gets the best of both worlds right now: no diapers and not having to think about his bladder at all either. For my other sons, they were clearly motivated to get out of diapers, and so they very quickly self-potty trained over the course of a couple of days. Ds3 has been mostly out of diapers for six months, and I feel like we've made very little progress, even though I can keep him miss-free all day. He actually was getting to be pretty consistent about telling us when he had to pee a couple of months ago, but he stopped. I don't know if it's regression due to the "baby coming" or what else could have caused him to stop signaling.

The thing is that I didn't start ECing him in order to get him out of diapers quicker. Rather, I did it for environmental reasons (to use fewer diapers) and because I wanted to respect the fact that, even as a little baby, ds COULD control his elimination muscles. But I was really hoping that ds would be independent (and by that, I just mean telling us he has to pee, not necessarily going to the potty by himself) before he reached this oppositional defiant stage of toddlerhood (where he balks at nearly anything I suggest, including using the potty).

I'm wondering what I can do to make ds more self-motivated to use the potty. I'm tempted to try rewards or something, which I don't generally believe in (but which we did use to get one of my older boys to start pooping in the potty, and it worked within 24 hours). Or put him in cloth diapers (we've been using disposables at bedtime) for a week and see if that increases his self-motivation (due to the discomfort of the diapers). But I don't want to cause him to regress further. Ugh.

I also am thinking ahead to our baby coming in June/July, and don't know if I should expect more regression then.

I'm sorry to hear that there are others in our boat, but glad for the company all the same .

Lex

I haven't read all the replies, but I was in the exact same spot with my DD at the same age (she'll be 3 in June). I think the turning point was meeting up with a new friend (Hi, Moonprysm! ) whose son self-trained at like 27 months or something, and was going completely on his own at that point. I was like, "what am I doing wrong?" and had a conversation with DD about other kids going by themselves. I decided that she needed to be in charge of her own pottying, and started putting the BBLP out where she could see and use it whenever she felt like it. I stopped asking her whether she needed to go, even when we were going out, because the defiance always made things so difficult and seemed to reverse her initiative. Making it her responsibility and giving her the tools (BBLP) to do the job herself seemed to do the trick. If she needed to go, she would go, and if she needed help, she would let me know.

I also read The Continuum Concept around the same time, and her description of how responsibility works made total sense to me. Something along the lines of the human psyche being "efficient" and not tending to allow any "overlap". Ie, if you are responsible for telling me when to go potty, then I will dedicate my energy to the other areas of my life where it is needed. Hope some of that makes sense!

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I've definitely tried this, but unfortunately my ds will happily just pee on the floor, even if he's naked. And he enjoys cleaning it up, so "you have to clean it up if you pee on the floor" does not seem to work as a natural consequence.

Yesterday and today, I've been having great luck with having ds pee on a tree outside. He's still not initiating it on his own, but there's much less defiance. Gives me hope that this warmer weather will get us through the transition once and for all.

LEx

i know with my DS that my pregnancy (and milk drying up) were huge causes for disruption in his pottying. he was telling me more frequently at 22 months than he was at 26 months because of my pregnancy.

anyway, i think every kid is different, and that there are two basic courses of action that might work - the pushing for independence, and the continuing to be in control. in our case i have no doubt (after experimenting frequently with both) that my DS was communicating to me that while he didn't like peeing in his pants, he very much still needed me to be in charge of getting him to the bathroom. gradually he just took more initiative, and i reacted by backing off a little. if i backed off too much he let me know by having a miss. eventually i just backed off completely because he was communicating that he was ready for that control. and now, maybe 6 months later, he actually gets annoyed when i ask him if he has to go. he said to me the other day "moooommmmyyy... i'm big now, you don't need to tell me about peeing in the potty anymore."

it was probably a good 18 months after i thought we were "almost there" that we actually got there... but we got there. as with most things, it was on DS's time, not mine. i can't say i didn't consider rewards and such, but ultimately i felt like it wasn't natural to reward someone for a basic bodily function. a thank you when he did it in the right place, sure. maybe even a hug, and an exclamation of how much better that feels than being in wet pants. but hey here's an M&M because you took a pee... i just can't go there especially after watch my friend's 3 yo DS come running to her doing the potty dance "mommy, i've got to poop! can i have a lollipop if i go in the potty?" and he didn't move from the spot and head for the toilet until he had his lollipop in hand. she looked at me and said "i've created a monster." it took her quite a while to break him of the expectation that every pee and poo was an award-winning work of tremendous import to the entire family. i think i'd rather just spend a few more months taking him to the toilet thanks