POTTY TRAINING!!!!!!

lotsofbustles · August 2013

So, we have been PT with our dd for 2 years!!!! Stated just sitting on the potty at 1, like after baths etc 1-2x/day. No pressure. Started PT for real at maybe 20 mo. No we are at the point that nearly every time I suggest she sit on the potty she flings herself on the floor and screams and or runs away. When she will cooperate it's fine and last week she was almost entirely dry for a week, but we were on vacation with my whole family and she had a toy waiting for her if she had 7 dry days. I think a whole house full of people encouraging her was good, but if Mom wants her to do it forget about it. She will go for dad much easier, but she has preferred him since Nov when dd #2 came along.

Any ideas for side stepping the power struggle and helping her get to the potty simultaneously? I read somewhere suggesting to her that it was her poo and pee that want her to go potty and not me. I tell her the poo and pee live in the big toilet with their families and they want to go be with their mom and dad. That works maybe 1-2 times a day, but we are going every 1/2 hour b/c other wise she wets herself. Almost never tells us when she has to go, unless we are in a store strangely. She mostly wears underwear with the thick absorbant section in the middle(hannah anderson) underneath plastic covers. Diapers at night and when I don't keep up on the laundry fast enough. Did the same thing for our ds who is 12 now also. He was 6 mo of hell but trained by 2.5.

I will try anything at this point. She is driving me crazy and wasting hours of my day in power struggle. Also OMG the laundry!!!! So tired of doing all this PT laundry for years. It's not even the wetting that is bothering me but the spaz every time we go potty. I don't care that she is trained as much as that she attempt to go when it's time to sit on the potty rather than freak out and scream.

TIA

MoreThanABride · August 2013

W it my dd I just had to let her be in charge. I would either go back to diapersand give it a rest for a month or so, our go to panties all day and let her be in charge. I have to just reminds dd not to have accidents and trust her to take herself. If I try to get her to go at a certain time it is like WWIII.

MoreThanABride · August 2013

Sorry for phone typos

kgs0505 · August 2013

We have a power struggle in our house too. We had to give timeouts for not cooperating. It went beyond just sitting on the potty though, it included stuff like brushing teeth. Daycare also suggested that 45 minutes was too small of an increment, to stretch to an hour/ hour and a half. Once we stretched out the time and gave timeouts for not cooperating, we actually had a lot more success. I think part of the issue was he felt like he always had to stop what he was doing and go to the potty. He also does great at stores with telling me he has to go and then staying dry til we get to the potty.

Our son is in regular underwear and plastic pants over it try and salvage shorts. We only use a diaper overnight right now. Never during the day. He is now averaging one accident a day and before we got firm and stretched out the time between potty visits, he would have 6 or 7 accidents a day.

kgs0505 · August 2013

A clarification on timeouts. If he's throwing himself on the ground and flipping out, I ask himif he is going to cooperate, he says no, I take him to the timeout chair. I let him sit there for 2 minutes. I go back, ask him if he's going to cooperate with me now, he says no, he gets another two minutes. This goes on for a while. and sometimes he'll pee all over the chair. He still gets to go sit on the potty. Eventually he chooses to come nicely to sit on the potty and pee. We did the exact same thing with the toothbrushing issue where he was doing the same exact thing. He's much more cooperative now, but it was a week of he.ll.

sschwege · August 2013

I think you need to take a break from PTing, honestly. It has turned into a huge power struggle.

After your break I think you need to figure out the best approach for your child. Every child is motivated by something, figure out what your child is motivated by and go with that.

I know some people say the best way to PT is to set a timer and have them go every hour two hours whatever. I'm sure that works for a lot of people. But I can tell you my DD would have had a fit, she's at that age where she doesn't want to be told to do anything. We have had the potty out for awhile same as you. I always invite her to come in with me while I use the potty. Three months ago she sat down on her potty at the same time and peed as well. I took her to Target that day let her pick out underwear and M & Ms. When we came home I told her it was up to her if she wanted to wear the underwear or not, but every time she went on the potty she would get two M & Ms. The first day she decided to wear underwear over her diaper the second day she decided to wear just underwear. I put the potty in a central location of her house and turned it over to her. I helped her if she asked, but this was her thing. To be quite honest it had to be her decision to do this, at the time I had a four month old, plus another boy DS's age that I babysit 5 days a week. I simply did not have the time to be chasing her around.

I'm not saying this method will work for your DD, just saying that your know your daughter best, this obviously isn't working, find something that will. Even if it's not an official 'method', I just made it up as I went along

erbear · August 2013

Let it go. She's not ready.

erbear · August 2013

kgs0505 said:

We have a power struggle in our house too. We had to give timeouts for not cooperating. It went beyond just sitting on the potty though, it included stuff like brushing teeth. Daycare also suggested that 45 minutes was too small of an increment, to stretch to an hour/ hour and a half. Once we stretched out the time and gave timeouts for not cooperating, we actually had a lot more success. I think part of the issue was he felt like he always had to stop what he was doing and go to the potty. He also does great at stores with telling me he has to go and then staying dry til we get to the potty.

Our son is in regular underwear and plastic pants over it try and salvage shorts. We only use a diaper overnight right now. Never during the day. He is now averaging one accident a day and before we got firm and stretched out the time between potty visits, he would have 6 or 7 accidents a day.

You lost me at timeouts. That's asinine. And averaging one accident a day is not a PTed kid.

MNgirl326 · August 2013

Wow- time outs for accidents? Seriously?!?! Find a better plan. ASAP. I don't care how difficult, strong willed, or stubborn a child is, they don't deserve to be in time out for not being willing to try to go potty or for having an accident.

OP- I would give it a break- it has turned into a serious power struggle and it is not getting you anywhere. Take a break. Then like others said, find the motivator. Whether its M&M's (1 for pee, 2 for poop) , small dollar store prizes, etc. There are some great behavior charts out there where there is a princess on one side and a castle on the other side and a path of stars- you put a sticker on each star as every time she has a success. When she fills the path- she gets a prize.

Potty training should NOT be a power struggle. Successes are celebrated, accidents are handled without emotion and very business like. Put her in underwear and let her have an accident if she refuses to try and go. Its not the end of the world. Then when she has the accident, you calmly say, "oops you had an accident. We can't put a star on the chart, and now we have to stop playing and go get you cleaned up" Then you go clean her up and as you are cleaning her up, you remind her of the what happens when she has a success. "Remember, when you go potty on the potty you get M&M's and you get to put a star on your princess page. I will be ready to help you when you are ready".

But for right now, take a break, and be ready for a different attitude when you are willing to try again.

vlagrl29 · August 2013

she is not ready. I would stop for the time being. you don't want her to think of the potty as a totally negative experience. We casually introduced the potty to DD as well a year ago and we just trained her 2 months ago and it was super easy. I let her just run around during the day with panties on. After 2 weeks she realized she needed to sit on the potty to pee. we didn't follow any methods, I just took her lead. I didn't think it would happen that fast and was prepared to stop if she hated it.

kgs0505 · August 2013

secondaryPULSE said:

abartow said:

Wow- time outs for accidents? Seriously?!?!    Find a better plan. ASAP.   I don't care how difficult, strong willed, or stubborn a child is, they don't deserve to be in time out for not being willing to try to go potty or for having an accident.

OP- I would give it a break- it has turned into a serious power struggle and it is not getting you anywhere. Take a break. Then like others said, find the motivator. Whether its M&M's (1 for pee, 2 for poop) , small dollar store prizes, etc.   There are some great behavior charts out there where there is a princess on one side and a castle on the other side and a path of stars- you put a sticker on each star as every time she has a success.   When she fills the path- she gets a prize.

Potty training should NOT be a power struggle.   Successes are celebrated, accidents are handled without emotion and very business like.   Put her in underwear and let her have an accident if she refuses to try and go.   Its not the end of the world. Then when she has the accident, you calmly say, "oops you had an accident. We can't put a star on the chart, and now we have to stop playing and go get you cleaned up"   Then you go clean her up and as you are cleaning her up, you remind her of the what happens when she has a success.   "Remember, when you go potty on the potty you get M&M's and you get to put a star on your princess page. I will be ready to help you when you are ready".

But for right now, take a break, and be ready for a different attitude when you are willing to try again.

Well said. I agree about taking a break.
Making PTing a power struggle or a negative experience is definitely not a good idea.

Woah! I never said he got timeouts for accidents! He never gets timeouts for accidents! He gets timeout for being uncooperative/not listening. And as I said, he was doing this for way more than going potty, it was for things like brushing teeth too. Am I supposed to not brush his teeth because he's not ready? No, I don't think so. He never gets punished for potty stuff.  We always make sure he knows why he's in the timeout chair, and he verbalizes it to us why he's there. Potty never comes into it. Sorry this was misinterpreted, but it's hard to describe what actually goes on in the type written forum. I would never suggest punishing as a potty training method.

ThatWasAHoot · August 2013

I would go read the 3 day method. Go back to diapers for 30 days and redo the entire thing with that method.

MNgirl326 · August 2013

Sorry for the misinterpretation KG0505 (I would quote, but for some reason its being stupid and I can't)

kgs0505 · August 2013

No worries!

TriciaandSean · August 2013

We've stopped asking my son if he needs to go since it was becoming a power struggle as well. Now we say nothing unless he is holding himself and looking like he has to go. Before we leave the house my husband will say I'm going to go potty before we leave do you want to go first or second. That way it's his choice, not us asking over and over. It would drive me crazy if someone asked me the same question over and over. I would stop listening and so do our toddlers.

I keep a portable potty in the room we are in so he doesn't feel like he has to completely leave his toys to go. We are on week 2 of no diapers. We went cold turkey no diapers except at nap and bedtime. We do not use padded underpants or plastic pants because I want him to feel wet and get his shorts wet. Also if he starts to pee a little I can see his shorts getting wet and I can help remind him to go to the potty and finish.

BrideMay2005 · August 2013

It took a while with DS and we still have the occasional accident. Pooping was easy for him, but remembering to pee wasn't. We did a few things to bribe him that helped but are probably not what you're supposed to do when you potty train.

First, we rewarded pooping with a treat. He had gone to a birthday party with a piñata and the only way he got a piece of candy was if he pooped on the potty. That worked great and he never has had an issue with announcing when he has to poop or having an accident.

For peeing, we picked out underwear he really liked but I wouldn't let him wear it until he could be dry for the day. If he had an accident, he had to wear pull-ups. He didn't want to wear pull-ups, but he still had accidents, so we started trying to make using the bathroom more fun. We race there and randomly reward him for peeing or trying to. We also got cued into signs he had to go and if he refused to try we'd threaten to take something away, like "we can't go to the playground if you don't try".

Overall, things have been going really well. I'll be curious to see how things are after I have our second child this month.

nikkibs · August 2013

Here's the cutest book for potty training kids, Once Upon a Potty (this link is for boys but there's another one for girls): https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Potty----Boy/dp/1554072832/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376277516&sr=1-8&keywords=potty

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