Potty Training-whether or Not to Let Him Run Around Without a Diaper

I've done it with 5 of my 8. It is the best way to potty train. I also have more then one potty chair and move it according to whatever room we are in. When it's time to train I pull out the carpet cleaner and clean as soon as it happens. No smell, no fuss....can't say the say for potty training my dogs though.

It's really not that bad after the first day or two.

I took away the diapers, but they wore thick training underwear. The underwear and pants would get wet, but they were pretty absorbent, so there were no puddles on the floor or anything. I waited until my boys were three, and it only took a few days of training, and only a few accidents.

Each kid is different.
But with both my kids, I went by their cues for readiness.
We had a potty chair.
We kept it near our child in whatever room/area they were in. Didn't nag them.
Kept them naked on the bottom.
One day they just went and sat on it. Then gradually they would do it and actually pee.
Great!
Then from there, in gradual stages, they get better at it.
Remember, a child's body is still developing, and the child has to learn... their body's CUES, for bladder output and what not. And that can take time.

I did that with my son, no bottoms. No pants or underwear. It worked, but he also never wanted to wear bottoms once he was potty trained! Believe it or not we never had any accidents on the carpet.
Good luck

That sounds weird. I know of people who just go naked on the bottom, but pants and no underwear? I think if you're going to put on clothes at least put on underwear, he'll certainly know when he goes in undies vs a diaper. Also, you're ingraining that we wear underwear, so there's that. Some people put on underwear and then a pull up over it so that if he does have an accident the pull up "catches" it before a huge mess is made. Either way, you will still have lots of underwear cleaning in your future, which is the worst part of potty training! :)

No. I did underwear with my oldest. I'm using underwear with plastic pants for the youngest. He feels wet w/o messing up my carpet. Thanks to that and some sticker rewards my lil guy is using the potty.. HOOORAYYY!!!

You can do this but ONLY after he knows what the heck you want him to do! You must spend at least 1-2 days taking him to the potty every 20-30 minutes so his body starts to develop muscle memory. When he seems to be getting it, then put underwear and pants as this will soak up a lot of the "accident".

It depends on how old he is. If he's over 3 years old this might help. If he's under 3 it's sort of a waste of time and effort because he'll pee on the floors at least once per day. At that age he's just not old enough.

Depends on if you want to go spend money on a carpet shampooer or spend some money on pull ups. The idea behind pull ups is that he can pull them up and down like real underwear. Some of them are where they feel when they wet too. Some are just normal pull ups.

To me the work involved in cleaning carpet and flooring and having to wash at least one load of clothes per day that are peed on then having to add bleach to sanitize them then running a load of water and heavy bleach through to clean the pee and poop smells out, well, it's just too much work.

When they're ready to train there is nothing to it. It just happens, everything clicks. If they're not ready or resistant it is a constant battle and you fight with it all day long. Then the house stinks and everything that is washed and dried in the same washer and dryer smells like pee and poop too.

My son learned to potty train ONLY when I took him out of diapers/pullups. If he wore a diaper/pullup, it gave him an excuse to go in his pants and NOT on the toilet. So when we were at home...AND WHEN HE WAS AWAKE... we wore just underwear. I told him every 30 minutes to an hour that it was time to go potty...we set the timer if we had to. If he said he didn't need to go, I'd make him at least try. When he did go, I made a HUGE deal out of it. I would jump up and down, spin around, scream, cheer, etc. He got the biggest kick out of it and wanted me to do it again and again. I told him every time he would go potty, I'll do the "potty dance". If he had an accident on the floor, I would IMMEDIATELY sit him on the toilet and then clean up the mess. I would NEVER EVER allow him to sit on the furniture unless it was a kid's chair.

If we went out of the house, I would take him potty right before we left and continuously ask him if he needed to go during our errand. If we were in a store or mall and he told me he needed to go, I would stop what I was doing and immediately take him.

The trick was definitely to take off the diaper/pullup. Some kids can be lazy and feel like they don't have to stop what they're doing to get up and go to the bathroom when they can just go right there in their pants.

I put both my boys in underwear and pants. It took them a day or so to really understand, but the mess was generally restricted to their clothes and not my floors.

I agree that the first couple of days were the worst - for my patience and for the messes. For me, it got so much easier after that.

Good luck!

Yes. I chose a 3 day weekend. Stocked up on food, ran all errands, and settled in for 3 days.

My son was 3 1/2 at the time. At first he didn't want to go near the bathroom because it was dark. So I placed the training potty just outside, in the laundry room. Then he was scared because the dryer was going. So I moved the potty to the middle of the kitchen. Each day I moved it slowly back until it was in the laundry room and then the bathroom.

I then blocked off the extra side rooms so that he could play in the living room, and the kitchen and the bathroom. That was it. He couldn't go upstairs without me. He had 2 accidents, about 3 hours apart. Both times, I took my time cleaning up the carpet. Nature's Miracle (pet product) works well on getting the urine smell out of carpets. Or the 'pet' carpet cleaners that cover urine. I would then take him upstairs and rinse him off, change his clothes in the bathroom. By the afternoon he snuck in to the kitchen and used the potty on his own. I happened to be on the phone with my mom at the time and she was shocked! By Tues. when he went back to daycare, he was being pretty consistant about using the training potty for peeing.

BMs took longer and he would usually hold it until we put him in to a pullup for bed time. Which meant each bedtime routine would use 2 pullups because almost as soon as we would put him in it he would poop.

Did he have accidents, yes, but they were few and far between.

Good luck.