My son is about 2 1/2 and has been potty training really well. He will go in his little potty when I ask him to and will stay dry most of the day with only a few accidents. Our problem is when we are away from home. He is scared to death of big toilets. When we were first starting training he was a little reluctant but he would eventually sit on the potty and go. Then we said on one of those automatic flushing toilets that was really loud and he won't use one since and this was a couple months ago. Today, he told me he needed to go to the potty three times when we were out, but each time he would freak out and not sit on the potty. We bought one of the nicer portable seats to put on it so the hole wouldn't be too big for him and it wouldn't move around. I would try and encourage him to start peeing standing up, but he is still too short to do this in a regular size toilet. I'm not sure what to do as I have tried offering him bribes, seeing his friends his age use the big potty and we take him when my husband or myself have to go so we can show him the potty is not scary. Also, he won't even use the big toilet in our home either, unless it is just to dump out his little potty and flush it, which he enjoys doing.
Either carry a little pad of post-its or use a long piece of toilet paper, but cover the sensor on the toilet so it won't go off while he is on the toilet.
Also, let him sit backward on the toilet. My son did this and he was never afraid of falling in! It also made an easy transition to standing up because he was facing the right way.
Hi, A. - Sorry to hear about your son's potty troubles but maybe it will help to know others have been in your shoes. My son had the same fear of public toilets and it had to do with how loud they were when flushed and we, too, had one of the automatice flushing incidents that just about scared him out of using other public toilets. This is what I did and it worked: Be sure to find a non-automatic flushing toilet and ASSURE him that you will not flush it until he is out of the stall. Once my son realized that I would not flush it while he was in the stall, his fears began to diminish. When we encountered another auto-flushing toilet, I used my hands to cover his ears while he was sitting just in case it began to flush while he was in there. He's now 5 and we no longer have these issues - good luck!
Our son isn't too crazy about public bathrooms either. We usually make 2 trips before he will use it. One to check it out and the 2nd one to actually go. First you want to try to get him to go standing up at home in the bit toliet. Get him a step stool so he is tall enough. Boys like to climb so this may be fun to him. You might even try by putting a couple cheerios in the big toliet to aim at, like a fireman. That might make it more fun than sitting on the little potty. For going poo on the big home potty, we used a seat with handles that we got at Target or WalMart. It made our son feel more secure to have something to hang onto.
As for being too short at public bathrooms, I would kneel down & let my son stand on one of my knees so he was tall enough. For the auto flushing toliets, put a piece of toliet paper over the sensor so it doesn't go off. When you are done & ready to flush, warn your son that it will be loud and he can cover his ears if he wants to. This all really helped with our son, who is now 3 1/2.
You can also look for family bathrooms, which sometimes have a mini toliet for kids, which is awesome! Quail Springs mall has these. Also a family bathroom won't have other people flushing toliets in the same room, which might scare him.
Good luck!
I had that same problem with my fully potty-trained 3 year old boy. He was absolutely terrified of the auto flush, and would say he pee was all gone so he wouldn't have to use it. I showed him one day that mommy can put her finger over the sensor and it won't flush until I take it off. He seems much more comfortable with things when he knows me or his daddy can control them...but he still gets really excited when we go into a public restroom and he sees that its not an automatic flusher....lol
A.,
If it's any consolation, my nearly-7-yo daughter still has trouble going to the bathroom on an automatic flushing toilet. She's been this way since she was your son's age and had a toilet flush under her two times in a row. Having your privates splashed unexpectedly by cold water was too much of a shock. Now, her fear is not so much for the flushers but for Porta-Potties.
If you live where there is a VonMaur store, check out the women's bathroom. The one in Wichita has a little, child-size toilet that all of my children, even when they were still in diapers loved to sit on. It is small enough that as toddlers they could sit on it and their feet would be on the floor. Worth a try!
K.
Carry some small post its in your purse to cover the sensor. Then let him stand on the toilet seat (facing the wall) and help him "aim". This is the wonderful thing about boys, they don't have to sit on the nasty toilet! This worked well with both of my boys.
I had this same exact problem with my daughter. I would stand behind her (straddling the toilet) so that the light sensor would be covered so that the toilet would not flush while she was on it. After she was finished, I would move to allow the toilet to flush. It took a couple of times, and then she realized she was fine. She was afraid of being flushed down the toilet. Good luck.
Oh yes...the 'Scary Toilet'. We know it well. For my daughter the problem is that it flushes in mid potty. If you carry post-it's in your bag, you can slap one over the sensor. Or you can hold your hand over it, but it gets tricky helping on and off the potty and with wiping and such. I just got a pad of post its and it made a big difference.
At home we have the toilet lid that is one pice and has a smaller lid built into the regular lid, makes them feel big, but still supports the little booty without much effort. We got ours at Lowes, but they also have them in the One Step Ahead catalogue.
Hope that helps. Good luck!
D.
A. the best thing we found was the Fisher Price On The Go Potty. Works great!
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5430277
My daughter would not go on a public potty. In fact, she would hold it for HOURS after she first started the pee-pee dance, just so she wouldn't have to go. She would not go at church (even though those were TINY potties in the preschool room), or even if we'd been gone all day somewhere. What finally broke her was we picked out a toy together, and I put it on a shelf so she could see it but not play with it. I made her a little chart and each time she pottied in public, I put a sticker star on the chart. I told her she had to get 10 stickers. She would go a couple times on the potty, then boycott it, then go a couple days, then boycott. It took her about 3 weeks to earn her potty, and actually it was maybe 12 or 13 times, because I wanted to make sure she was really on the straight and narrow. :) We made a big deal of her EARNING her toy, and we did not have a single problem after that. The auto flusher scared her a little, but there were very few of those around us and she'd just ask me to hold her hands to catch her if she fell in. lol
Now my son was the one that couldn't reach the potty to pee pee. In public places, I would pick him up and let him stand on the tops of my shoes. This gave him about 3-4 inches, and we did this for an entire year PLUS. We never did cherrios, but we did give them each 1-2 m&ms for going #1 in a big potty (at home or elsewhere) and 2-3 for going #2.
Good luck!
Do you drive a minivan or an SUV? Some moms keep a little potty in the back then where ever you are you can run out or stop the car and use the potty. It isn't a longterm solution, but then again he won't be afraid of big potties forever. My kids have pottied in their potty chair in all kinds of parking lots (dump into nearest flower bed) rinse with watch bottle.
