OT- Potty Training

[RooRach0906]

I need some advice I would love to start potty training my DD next month, she will be turning 2 and I would LOVE to have her completely trained by the time we go on our next trip which will be in Dec of this year.

What books do you suggest for that age?? and for me???
What are your best tips???
I dont know why but I am really worried about this... I think she is ready as a lot of times lately she has been saying "potty" and running to the door.

TIA!!!!

 

[Groomer Gal]

I don't know about books...BUT...as a Mother of four...including a set of twins...I have had my fair share of experience in this subject.

First of all....is she staying dry through the night and naps? If so...she is physically ready. Before then, I'm not saying it's not possible, but it is a little more difficult. (btw, having a girl already puts you ahead of the game...my boys were sooooo much more difficult)

The BEST thing I did was a prize bag. I went to the dollar store and spent about $20 on all kinds of little toys and every time someone was successful on the potty...they got to pick a prize out of the bag. The twins practically potty trained themselves to get a prize!

Another thing I did was at age 2 I started a behavior chart....with stickers. At that age they just want to please Mama so much that it's the perfect time to start setting great habits.
I made a chart on a big poster board and hung it in the kitchen. We had things like 'i cleaned up my mess' or 'I helped Mama' with a place next to it to put stickers. Once they filled in a row....they got a little prize. It was just a few simple things and I added 'I went pee on the potty" once we were potty training.
OH! let THEM put the stickers on themselves......all of my kids like that as much as the prize!!! (my twins are 7 now and they still want a chore chart and stickers! )

And one more thing.....make sure your partner also makes a HUGE deal out of the chart when they come home....kids just soak it in and beam with pride on their accomplishments!!!

Good luck!!! If you do this for a short while and she just doesn't seem to be getting it...take a break. She may not be quite ready yet and it can be frustrating...for both us and them.

 

[disprincessatheart]

So glad I saw this thread. My son is 27 months and i keep wondering when I should start training. He is dry after naps most of the time, but wet, really wet, in the mornings, so I guess it's not time yet since it will only be partial training until he can hold it overnight. To be honest, other than the price, diapers seem so much easier than having to run him to the bathroom all the time

 

[Childs1stTime2Disney]

Highly recommend 3 day potty training. You can buy the ebook on the web.

 

[blessedby3]

You will be able to tell if she is really ready after a couple of days of training. I wanted my DD trained before our trip a couple of years ago, and while she was willing to sit on the potty, she just wasnt getting it and we were staying frustrated. I put it on hold, and honestly, it was much easier doing WDW with her in diapers rather than rushing to find a bathroom all the time with a newly trained dd. We tried again a few months after our trip, and she did great. She was definately ready and it showed.
A friend of mine who works with special needs kids all day recommends keeping a shoebox of goodies for the times when the child successfully uses the potty. Only get it out after the child has used the potty and let them play with it for 10-15 mins...then put it back up for the next time.

 

[badblackpug]

I didn't use any books. I just put them in panties. (don't use pull-ups, they feel like diapers and they just wet them) and when I had a few days off, I put them on the potty every hour. I gave rewards every time they used the potty. (M & Ms) and made a HUGE fuss every time they were "successful."

I am presently potty training my 2 year old son.

 

[mjkacmom]

Mom of 5 here. First, don't base it on being dry in the morning (I had kids pt'd for years before they'd wake dry). I found that 2 1/4 - 2 1/2 was a great window to try the naked baby test. Put child in a room, no bottoms, with a potty. I liked the once upon a potty dvd - heck, even my potty trained ones sat on a potty during that dvd! I told them if they had to go, sit on the potty. I found that if there more than 2 accidents, they weren't ready, and back in diapers for a couple of months (dd9 trained 3 months before ds9 - he failed the first test).

Keep this up for a couple of days (I used pullups only for outings, and kept those few and far between). The child, at this point, will probably be pretty much 100% nakey trained. The next step is loose bottoms (that don't feel like the tighter fitting diapers he/she has been going in for his/her entire life). After a few days of 100%, loose underwear. If this is a setback, go back to commando.

Using this method, all of mine were pee-trained in under a week. Poop training and pee training don't always go hand in hand (they did with 3 of mine, but not the other 2). Whatever you do, never force a child to poop on the potty. This could cause a withholding issue, causing permanant bowel damage.

Good luck! We also used m&m's, and LOTS of praise!

 

[tartemis]

Agree with pp that being dry through the night is not a requirement to start potty training. Both my kids were day trained before they were 2, but my eldest didn't start becoming dry through the night until she was 3 and my 2 1/2 year still wears pull-ups at night.

The key in my opinion is to just commit to it for a week. No diapers or pull-ups, just underwear. Right around 2 is the best time to do it -- too much later and I think you start to run into problems.

Good luck!

 

[Ginny Favers]

I have to say that some kids, no matter how smart they are, just will not get potty trained no matter what you do. I did everything to get my DD trained from 18 months on, followed the praise, the stickers, the "leave em naked" methods, and none of them worked. I nearly pulled my hair out.

Until I decided to go with the "no kid goes to college without being potty trained" method. That means you just let them decide when they "get it." I really thought that by not pushing her to be potty trained, she would never be. But it was the opposite-- she knew what to do, but was just being defiant. She liked the attention, even if it was negative. As soon as I laid off, a switch just went on in her head, and from that moment on, she was trained-- she never had another accident, not even at night.

With this one, I'm doing the same thing.... not worrying about it. My daughter will be in diapers for the next trip and I'm ok with that. Easier for me. That way I won't have to panic when we've been waiting on a line for 2 hours and she suddenly has to go.

 

[puffkin]

Big fan of the nakey butt method. We also did not use a potty but a potty ring on the toilet that was very sturdy (Baby Bjorn).

I also would not use the dry in the morning as an indicator. My son was day trained for 2 years before he consistently made it through the night. He sleeps like the dead and just wouldn't wake up.

There is definitely a small window right around 2-2.5 years of age that it is generally very easy to train. Miss that and it can be a very long and frustrating process. We were lucky and caught it along with his home daycare provider who trained the 3 toddlers she had the same way and it was an absolute breeze. When he entered his daycare center at age 2.5 he was the only kid in his room that was potty trained. They used the wait til they are ready approach while all 3 of the home daycare kids using nakey butt were trained well before 2.5.

 

[Betty Rohrer]

worked in a toddler room at day care for 20 plus years, trained lots of kids, pull up do not work for training. feels like a diaper. child has to be intested in the potty. we used a lot of mini marshmellows. it does take a lot of accidents to be trained. have to be ready to do extra laundry. praise the times making to potty rather than misses. the potty ring on big potty makes change to big potty easier. plus they make fold up one to take out with you. if child will only use potty chair, you will need to take with you a lot.

 

[NYEmomma]

Highly recommend 3 day potty training. You can buy the ebook on the web.

We used this as well & I totally recommend it!! DD was almost 2.5 when we did it... had NO interest in using the potty at all, nor did she wake up from naps/over-night dry.

It worked so well. It was probably a good week to week and a half before I felt confident enough to take her out in public with undies on, but truthfully, she didn't have any accidents after day 4.

 

[Blackbeltdisneygirl]

Every kid is completely different, so there is no real age that works for everyone. One of my daughters was fully trained at 15 months, another at 18 months, but the others were older. My son was not fully night trained till much, much older. I think he might have been around 6 before he stopped completely, and that was after major effort on my part.

I start getting them to sit on it at an early age, but don't make it a requirement. We had a Muppets book we used to read, and my youngest had a DVD, but again, we didn't use them all the time. Candy didn't work for my kids, toys as rewards didn't work, but feeding the piggy sure did! My kids were all about the money!!! I bought each of them a piggy bank, and let them feed the piggy a penny for #1 and a quarter for #2. Worked like a charm. I'm talking, it happened so fast I couldn't believe it. My easiest trainings happened when I did day and night training all at once. It was a ton of work, but for a much shorter time period. I would just get up several times a night and put them on the potty. Every night we went a little bit longer between trips, and before a week was out, they were trained. My son was like me though. I was a bed wetter for a long time when I was little. His bladder was very sensitive, and I struggled with that as a child too (still do if I am being honest). With him I really had to dig in and wake up every single hour on the hour for about a week. Then we started letting a couple hours pass. Within a couple weeks he wasn't wetting the bed anymore.

I was a tired momma, but found it was easier just to buckle down and do the work. It took less time and frustration in the long run. Again, this may not work on every child, but I trained 5 this way, and they all fell in line. I think with the nighttime thing, it doesn't matter if they are holding it all night or not. It is about training the body to realize it is time to get up when the bladder becomes too full. As with training the body to do anything, it takes repetition.

The one other suggestion I have is that if your child becomes sick at any time during training, it may just be best to wait until after they are better to continue training. It is the one time I am in agreement with giving up. I didn't like sending my kids mixed messages. I just found that when they were sick it was a bit traumatizing to train them in anything. I put off breaking my son from a bottle at 1 year old b/c he had severe sinus infections and was just miserable. It would have been really hard for him to not have the comfort of his bottle at that time. My daughter that was trained at 18 months had a slight constipation issue that made her regress a bit until she felt better, but we got right back on track when she did. My 15 month old was almost trained at 14 months when she became dehydrated (she would and still does REFUSE to eat or drink a thing when she gets sick b/c she is terrified of throwing up, so she would become dehydrated and we would have to hospitalize her to keep fluids in her.) That undid a bit of our training, but when she got better, she was right back at it. I can't remember why we started so early with her, but she wanted to do it, so we did! Good luck!

 

[bekkiz]

We also used the 3 day e-book, but it took longer than 3 days. We also did not even try overnight stuff, that's not really something you can train, it usually just happens on its own. The 3 day method worked well for us, and it was a good way to keep it positive.

I will say, we started at 2.5, and one twin was totally day trained in about a month, the other one took 4 months. But, the first twin had a regression around his 3rd birthday. Just know that sometimes it will feel like one step forward, two steps back.

 

[RooRach0906]

OP Here ~ Thank you so much for all the advice!!! I am not a anixous/stressed about it as I was.