potty training secrets!

vanceke08

oh, you think I had some? no. I want yours my LO is 21 months and showing signs that he is getting ready to be on the bog boy potty. any tips or advice? TIA! 

cpmich

My secret was just waiting until he was ready. Our kid stayed in diapers way past when we could have trained him. He night trained himself. Six months later we ditched the diapers. By that time, he was regularly taking daytime stretches of 5-6 hours without peeing and pooping roughly at the same time every day. Seriously, it took one day because he was ready. He will be 3 this month. Kids have their own timelines. Some earlier, some later. I will say that diapers were easier than dealing with dirty public restrooms.

Beyond that, take him to the bathroom with you when you go... And watch the Daniel Tiger potty episode. :-)

blush64

I think PP have given great advice. The most important thing to do is wait until the child is actually ready. I waited until my kids were ready and they were fully trained within a day or two. Once we started there were no diapers at any time, even night and naps. My boys were ready pretty early which is great but I was fully prepared to wait as long as they needed.

My mother told me once you start training don't use diapers or pull ups because they might find it confusing to have big kid underwear and then switch back to diapers/pull ups. I know people who have used them successfully so who knows.
Edit I think she thought it would drag out the process and might confuse the child to use pull ups or diapers after training has started. If they are a big kid why do they have to put a baby diaper back on. (Pull ups are too diaper like) After thinking more about it I agree. There was no need to use a diaper or pull up because they were ready to just use the potty/toilet.

nosoup4u

Wait until he's ready, but definitely be pro-going on the potty. DS2 went from diapers to fully potty trained in about a week, it was magical. DS1 took months, and it was a lot tougher. Be patient and calm no matter what! And having lots of naked butt time helped both of them start to understand when they had to pee/poop.

We used diapers at night and pull ups while they were training, and it didn't confuse them. The pull ups were for when we were out and about, but we always switched out of them when we got home.

rayandbrit

I completely agree with the others. Wait until he's ready, and it will make everyone's life much happier and easier. I always just casually throw it out there like "do you want to go on the potty?" and when they do, I make a huge fuss over it. Once I feel like everyone's on board, we go for it all the way. I let LO run around nakie on the bottom half for a couple days (normally over the weekend), and that's usually all it takes!

With my first I tried rewards, pull-ups during the day, etc. and it was draining on both of us. Once I waited for her to let me know she was ready, it was a breeze, same with my second, and will hopefully be the case with my third!

rae_dylanzmom

We started introducing the idea about then, but we are still in the midst of it. Some thoughts that are different from PP's great advice:

We have a little potty and the big potty. For awhile, DS didn't want to leave whatever was happening to pee, so we just put the little potty wherever we were playing. Then we moved it closer to the bathroom and then in the bathroom. Now he only uses the big potty. (this is borrowed from dog-training.)

Don't underestimate the power of the peers. A couple of potty trained friends was super motivating for my DS.

We are going a lot slower than the pp mentioned, but we travel a lot and that seems to set us back (mostly because of my desire to stay stress-free about the whole transition). Mostly I'm just not putting a time limit on it and trying not to create stress around it. 

My friends who expected to use the 3-day method were mostly disappointed and are honestly still trying to get their kids to poop in the potty. (I have no reason to think those are related,... they just are happening to the same kids.) Celebrate if it works that way, but try not to plan on it.

There's a camp of 'reward-your-kid' people and a camp of 'let your kid become intrinsically motivated to use the toilet and not because he gets m&m's'.... I think kids are just different and to figure out what will motivate yours. In the beginning, we did a celebration march to the big potty to pour in DS's pee and that was more motivation for him than food or stickers. 

GL!