Talk to me about PTing multiples

Darcie Elicia · March 2014

My girls are 2 years 9 months and don't really have any interest in potty training. One girl was doing awesome for about a month but then stopped after she noticed her sister wasn't using her potty at all. I try to have them run around naked but they just ask for a diaper or pee on the floor.

Am I being too pushy? Should I give them time? I know they're definitely old enough, I just don't want to add more stress to our lives.

Wishing we didn't have to pay for diapers anymore!!! Help!

Ylvelill · March 2014

It is hard if they show no interest. Have you tried potty dance and/or rewards? Some parents have success with using mini m&ms as a reward when they use the potty. Some try to schedule potty time around when they usually pee/poop.

Stressing about it will not make it better, but making it part of your routine can be useful.

ppants · March 2014

Mine are b/g and we started @ 2yrs 8 mo. I put them in underwear and they sat on the potty every hour. DD pooped her pants for 3 days in a row before she got the hang of it. DS pooped in the potty like a champ, but had several pee accidents. They were PT and telling us they needed to go in about 2 weeks.

We used stickers as a reward. 1 sticker for pee and 2 for poo.

kgs0505 · March 2014

Although we haven't gotten to the twin PTing yet, my son was very difficult to PT. He seemed ready and interested, but he has an iron will. After various methods, we found that taking him too often (1x/hour or 45 min) was worse. We instead took him about once every 90 minutes and he was way more successful. Now he takes himself to the bathroom on his own. I only ever ask him if he needs to go if he's dancing. If it's been awhile, I might invite him to come with me. The only time I "make" him go is if we are leaving the house for a car trip longer than 15 minutes. He needs to feel in control of himself.

His bribe of choice was m&m's. He has since switched to mints or jelly beans (1 for pee, 2 for poop). We still allow him to be bribed, (but he has to ask, we no longer offer), even though he's been doing great since about September. We still have nap/nightime to PT yet. We are currently working on nap time. Of course I am kind of kicking myself, because daycare told me to just ditch all the diapers all at once, because if I kept them for sleep, he'd learn it was ok to pee in bed. Oh well!

LucyRicardo3 · March 2014

I'm not looking forward to the stress of it, but I'm ready for the price break on diapers, lol.
I didn't think I'd ever get my oldest daughter out of night time pullups, but we made it. I'm praying the next two are a bit more successful around the clock. Hope that constant one-up'ing thing they've been doing lately will carry over into PTing.
I really have no sure fire tips. My son was pretty easy; my oldest daughter.. well, like I said above, took FOREVER.
There is a blogger I read from time to time that had a post on this recently... if anyone is interested .. It's not my blog (too much of a slacker for that sort of thing), and I have no connection to her or any sort of whatever ads, whatever,, yada yada yada ...
link is
https://www.goodenoughmother.com/2014/03/tales-from-a-twin-mom-5-tips-to-help-potty-train-your-twins/

j&j508 · March 2014

Mine are B/G. They started being interested around 20 months, so we started trying...and they became disinterested fast. We didn't push it. Lots of people said to wait until they seemed like they were ready, and I think that made a difference for us.

We waited until the holidays when they were ~32 months old because we had a nice long stretch at home without work/school and did the three day potty training method. By the end of a week, they were rarely having accidents, and now they both take themselves to the potty, wear underwear all day, and their pull-ups at nap and night are sometimes dry. I'm calling that a serious win. It was later than I wanted to potty train, but I'm so glad we waited until they were ready and we didn't end up with a power struggle!

carrotcake06 · March 2014

I don't have experience w twins, but my big one is PTed. We started when he was about 2.5 I think. Pee training went well - I didn't think he was ready but his s daycare wanted to do it, so we went with it and it took a few weeks to click. Even then he'd have accidents every now and then.

Poop was an entirely different story. He pooped himself pretty much every day for the better part of 6 months after he was pee trained and in underpants. He would hold it all day and poop the minute he got home. It was incredibly frustrating. I can't even begin to tell you. Cleaning poop out of underwear on the daily for 6+ months. Ugh.

Literally a week before the twins were born he decided to poop On the potty. And hasn't had an accident since. I don't know what happened, but it clicked at the right time.

He's still in nighttime diapers/pull ups. That's a developmental thing and I not pushing it

macchiatto · March 2014

We did 3 Day PT with our twin boys when they were 3y1m. One twin was showing interest and asking to wear underwear instead of diapers. Our other twin wasn't showing interest but I talked to his OT and EI about it and they agreed to go ahead and try doing both of them at once because he was someone he was usually reluctant to try new things but if you kind of brought him along for the ride, he would often end up doing fine. 3 Day PT worked pretty well for us. We didn't fully follow the method; we still did diapers or pull-ups for sleeping and waited till each boy was waking up dry regularly before switching them to underwear for naps and night.

macchiatto · March 2014

Oh and I should add, one of my twins (the one who showed more signs of readiness) took several more months before he was poop trained; he would wait and poop in his diaper at nap or nighttime. It got frustrating after a while. IIRC it was actually 7 months from the time we did 3 Day PT until he would poop in the potty consistently, and then another month or two after that he started waking up dry and went to underwear 24/7. It may have gone better if we had gone straight to underwear from the get-go but I just didn't want to try that with two at once right off the bat. With our other son, he started pooping on the potty after a week or so, and was night-trained as well about a month later. So yeah, the one who was showing a lot less signs of readiness actually caught on and became fully PTed far sooner.

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