Potty Training and Starting Preschool

Hey K.,

I think you should use that as a goal to get him potty trained by August. Somewhere people have decided not to push our kids (maybe because it is less work for us to wait for them), but we aren't setting goals for them to meet either. By 2 1/2 he is very developmentally capable of potty training. If you say he has no interest in the potty then start off slow. Make it fun to go potty. Try getting a cool toilet seat, I saw some at walmart that looked like baseballs, footballs and basketballs for not that much and they also make your favorite Nick Jr. characters on potty seats. Let him pick it out that way he knows it is his! Explain to him that the seat is so he can go pee pee and poo poo in the potty. Or this sounds silly, but let him flush toilet paper down the potty and tell him YAY!! While you talk about going pee pee in the potty and flushing it down too. Watch him carefully and he will show you some cues as to what interests him in the potty. They make games for little boys on how to "aim" or use cheerios. Its something fun that they would enjoy. Even when he goes in his diaper or pull up take him to the potty and say pee pee in the potty. All of these things get him interested and talking about it will stick in his head so that when he is "ready" he already knows where pee pee goes and how to flush and so on. Try incentives like stickers or stamps and if he tries to sit on the potty, even if he doesn't go, give him a sticker and yell YAY. That way he sees that it is a positive thing and he gets praise when he tries. Trust me if you start that now, you will be surprised how little time it will take to get him interested!

Or you could try what I did with my daughter who is 20 months. Last month she started noticing the potty so I started letting her run around with no diaper on at home and now she is very aware when she pees. Only a month later, she tells me when she needs to pee and poop and most of the time she goes on the potty. We still have a long way to go, but that method worked for me :)

Good Luck and I hope this helps!!

K.,

I don't know if this wil be of any help but my daughter started school this past Aug 07' and she was 3 years and 3 months. I was feeling very hopeless as far as potty training went,when it came time to send her to school. I just felt like "she didn't get it". Before school started she kept having accidents and barely making it and I thought it would be a nightmare when it came time for school. The first few weeks I would take her to the school bathroom myself right before class started and let her pee and that alone gave me peace of mind because that first week is usually 1/2 days. I sent her in the thick training underpants and NO ACCIDENTS! It turned out she was literally potty trained that first week. She stopped having accidents. They give the kids a tour the first day of school and show them where the "potty" is and ask/ encourage them to go at certain times during their school schedule. Your son too wil see other kids go potty wash their hands and it will just become routine. The teachers are used to dealing with accidents from time to time so I think he will be fine.
I too encourage you to not worry.

I think that is plenty of time.
My son could potty by himself at 18 months... WHEN HE WANTED TO! hahaha And, he had the pee pee part down forever before he'd do the poopoo.
There are books about it. Once Upon a Potty (or something like that), you will get lots of advice.
Also - there are some MDO's that probably have room NOW and if your child is around others who potty, he may be more incentivized to do it himself.
GOOD LUCK

I had the same trouble! I had a little boy with all sorts of enthusiasm for life and no interest in channeling that into potty training. I did the next best thing. He loved games, so I made a game board to play the "potty game" with him. It was similar to chutes and ladders. If he peed he moved forward one space and if he pooped he moved forward two spaces. If he had an accident he had to move backward. I had incentives along the way and at square 100 there was a talking grill (something he had been asking for forever)! I figured if we could make it to 100 he wouldn't need the game anymore! It worked on my son and my daughter. Don't feel intimidated by moms who potty train their kids really early. Just find what interests your son and exploit it! :)

A week after my son turned 3 we did potty training. I put on some thick cotton training pants/underware (from Walmart) & over that some vinyl underware-to help keep the pee from leaking out onto everything. As soon as he would pee he would come waddleing over and say he was wet and wanted to be cleaned up. He hated the wet feeling sooo much it only took 3 days and each day got better. My nieghbor has a 3 yr old girl and did the same thing I did. It works fast. Pull-ups don't work b/c they can't really feel the yucky wetness.

K.- I have an almost 4 year old boy and he was just FINALLY potty trained about 3 months ago. I had the same issues in the Fall. I wanted to put him in some sort of school/Mother's Day Out, but they did require that he be potty trained. I only had two months to do the training, and I am very glad that I didn't pay the tuition, as he had no interest.

Everyone told me that boys can be slow and that just one day it will "click" for them and they will want to use the potty. That did happen for Hudson, but it took a while.

We tried EVERYTHING....bribes with food, trains, praise, etc. You just never know how an individual child will respond.

Since you do have 6 months, you probably could get him trained by then, so perhaps you would be okay. But, don't get stressed if he doesn't have an interest...he is still very young.

It would likely not be out of the ordinary that he could be potty trained by the time he is three, but it is equally as ordinary that he would not be. My oldest boy was potty trained before he was 2. So, with my second son, I started working with him when he was your son's age - he really was not ready. So, I waited for his cues and he was ready when he was around 3. The problem will be that the more pressure you might apply, the more resistance you might get. In the end, because my son is also an August birthday, we delayed him in school a year and it was so worth it, because once he started school he was more than ready and has been a leader in his class versus being one of the youngest. So, you need to ask yourself why you're so eager for him to be in pre-school and maybe find a program that suits him once he is potty trained. If he starts school just barely potty trained and has accidents, etc. that will not be good at all for his self esteem and it certainly won't make him popular with the teachers.