Potty Training Tips/Experiences

First child, our son, took over a year to train (started at two and a half). He had no interest, no motivation, nothing. We bought the "potty train in a day" books, did potty parties, rewards, you name it. We finally forced the issue when he was the last in his daycare class to move to the preschool room when he was over three. Put him in underwear and dealt with lots of laundry and lots of cleaning for days and then he got it. However, he had frequent accidents a good year or two after (into kindergarten and once or twice in first grade). We joked for a while he'd be wearing pull-ups to his prom. I honestly think he'd still be in pull-ups at age seven if we left it up to him. He still waits until the last minute to go use the potty.

With our second child, our daughter, we had zero motivation to train and planned to put it off. However, she mentioned she wanted to use the potty at two. We decided to follow her lead, put her in panties and she was accident free within a month or two and remains accident-free at four. Piece of cake. No potty parties, rewards charts, games.

In both cases, daycare was consistent with what we were doing at home. The move from pull-ups to underwear was key.

We let my son lead. He was in the 2's class at daycare and the teacher has potty trained many kids. My son started showing interest when he saw the other kids using the toilet, and she starting having him use it when she changed his diaper. She let me know when she wanted us to bring in some underwear - if he wanted to wear it. He had some interest at home, but it was random, and he didn't want to be forced. We did kinda have to force him in the mornings because he would wake up dry and his daytime diaper couldn't handle that much pee without leaking. He did underwear a couple times, but then stopped wanting them.

I was buying more underwear because we didn't have enough for home and daycare and didn't want to spend the extra on the characters. When he helped unload groceries, he saw them, and I opened them and mentioned that they were just like daddy's. He said potty and went running to the bathroom and pooped. He then wanted underwear. He asked for it everyday after that. If he fights potty time, we offer diapers or toilet? He has picked toilet. He is now asking for underwear at night, but my husband wants 2 weeks of totally dry nights first. (I shouldn't have told him about last weekend :) ). So, hopefully next Friday, he can try underwear to bed.

He has shown interest on and off for awhile now, but from the daddy underwear to now is about 3 weeks. He has had some random accidents, but has really been amazing, and he is on HIS terms.

Hi, My daughter and her husband has been trying to potty train there son for months now, but he still went in his diaper, untill a few months ago they had bough big boy underpants and put them on him and he's been in them ever since day and night never put another diaper on him and never had accident once. He loves his underpants he has all kind spiderman, deigo, cookie monster, elmo, and others to.He just turned 3.

My son was about 2 when he started telling me he'd peed or pooped in his diaper but i knew he wasn't ready then. At about 2.5 he started telling me when he had to pee or poop so i decided to give it a try. I let him pick out a couple books to leave in the bathroom for when he was trying to poop, I got him his very own big boy pump bottle of soap for after he used the potty, and i used the 2m&m trick. I would ask him about every 45min if he needed to peepee or poopoo. We had ALOT of accidents the first few days but it got better pretty quick! Within about a week, he had it down pat. We do still use pullups at night though- he turned 3 in September.

Good Luck!!

Throw away the diapers. He will learn real quickly once he knows they are gone. We did a 3 day method of potty training with my son, which basically emphasized love, consistency, and NO MORE DIAPERS. Our daycare was wonderful about doing exacting what we did while we were at home. I chose the 3 day method because I was scared and wanted to be done with it fast! ;) It worked for my son in 3 days, and we are on day 1 with my daughter!

Here's a link to another mom's responses to the same question. http://www.mamapedia.com/questions/6651391040949452801#re...

Every family I've known has had the best results with waiting until the child wants to train. And they do, just like they want to learn to walk and talk. It's excellent to talk about potty training and what the body does, it's great to play potty games with toys, puppets, and occasionally the child, it's great to read books and watch videos, to let her watch you use the toilet, to observe how much easier time she'll have when she learns to use the potty and doesn't have to stop for diaper changes. (I thought of this as "pre-training" with my daughter.)

There are mothers who successfully train their kids with an intensive "boot camp" or "3-day" approach, and sometimes this apparently works. I've known a few kids who became very resistant AFTER being trained this way, when the ongoing obligation became apparent to them, or when an illness, a move, or a new sibling complicated their lives. It's not an approach that will work consistently for every child.

When the child is physically and emotionally ready, training is finished in anywhere from a day to a couple of weeks, with diminishing accidents every day. If this age of readiness for a particular child is, say, 30 months, that's when they'll succeed. If the parents hadn't started training months earlier, training would be done, start to finish, in days. If the parents had started training at, say, 18 months, then the training would have gone on for a year by the time the child succeeded. Either way, that child trained at 30 months.

And child who decides he's ready is simultaneously trained at daycare, too, because it is their choice to use the potty. They are ready, and proud of it.

Hi S.,
I potty trained my son at 3 1/2. We went straight to underwear (pull up @ night). I got a pee pee box and a poopy box. We went to the $ store and picked out some goodies (cars, candy, stickers, etc...). I had him put the goodies in the boxes and had them in the bathroom out of his reach. He had about 20 accidents the first day, 18 the next... Every time he went pee pee he got a prize from that box. Every time he pooped, he got a prize from that box. I had the better prizes in the poop box. It took about 3 weeks before he was "trained". I was asking him about every 20 minutes if he had to go. I was lucky enough to have 3 other boys in his pre-school class also training. We also got a back pack with 5 or 6 changes of clothes. After a few months, he regressed, but we stuck to it and I no longer walk around with the back pack( we leave it in the car). Hope this helped.
L.