NWMR: Thinking about giving up on potty training

Re: NWMR: Thinking about giving up on potty training

• shannm member

  July 2014

  I think I responded to your last post. Your son will be trained in four to six months. But you have to choose if that will be six months of cleaning up accidents or not. Me? My dd is a month older than your LO and I have zero intention of training her this summer. I will be waiting until at least two weeks after she is clearly ready. Then if like my son, it will only be a four day ordeal and not six months.

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• shannm member

  July 2014 edited July 2014

  ClaryPax said:

  shannm said:

  I think I responded to your last post. Your son will be trained in four to six months. But you have to choose if that will be six months of cleaning up accidents or not. Me? My dd is a month older than your LO and I have zero intention of training her this summer. I will be waiting until at least two weeks after she is clearly ready. Then if like my son, it will only be a four day ordeal and not six months.

  Why do you assume it will be 4-6 months of cleaning up accidents?  Is it the child's age- I can't see that as I have siggys off my account.  DS had accidents for about a month, but was good after that as long as I kept reminding him.  ETA- he was 2.5 when we started. 
  

  
  My point was that parents have two choices, 1) to go through a longer training period where they are wiping up messes daily constantly questioning whether or not their child is ready or to 2) wait till they are way past ready and to do it then in a matter of days. In the end, the result and timing of the ultimate skill is typically the same. Her LO turned two in may. To me, her description suggests he is not interested. But it's just my opinion and my n is one so, ya know, FWIW. Edit to add: I am also odd in the sense that I don't believe in taking kids to the potty for true training, so I am probably not the best person to contribute to this particular situation.

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• fitmom82 member

  July 2014

  This kid is driving me crazy.  We were out for a while today so I left him in a diaper.   When we got home he stood in front of me, while still in the diaper, and said "it's coming" and stood as though he was peeing.  I figured if he knows then we can do this, so I put him back in underpants.  During dinner he said "mommy, my chair is wet."  He had an accident although he had peed about 15 minutes before.  I was fed up and put him in a diaper.  About a half hour later, in his diaper, he sat on the potty and smirked at me as he probably peed in his diaper.  

  I think i'll keep getting him used to potty time for the next 2 weeks until we go away, then after vacation try again.

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• dashofreality member

  July 2014

  So I agree and disagree with @shannm. Disgree on the two scenarios. DD asked for a potty right after she turned 2. I wasn't planning on it but went with it. She had accidents for about a month (mostly in pullups). She also would not poop on the potty. It clicked and she was pee trained and has had 2 accidents in 1.5 years since. Poop was about a week and half behind pee. I also know parents who wait until the kid is 'ready' and are majorly stressing out that there 3.5 - 4 year old refuses to use the potty.

  I agree though, that sticking your kid on a potty every 30 minutes, is not only torture for everyone involved, but not truly trained. What finally got DD trained was that we sat her down and explained that she now knew what to do to go potty and that it was now up to her to go when she had to and to call us when she needed help. Then we stopped asking her if she had to go. DH and were getting nervous and wanted to ask when we knew she had to go, but we were shocked when she trotted off to the bathroom, pulled down her pants and went.

  I probably wouldn't stop at the point you are at, but I wouldn't force it much longer.

  DD Nov 2010 ~ DS June 2012

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• groovygrl member

  July 2014

  I am in the don't force it camp and never wanted to associate the bathroom w/ fighting and forcing and making it a battle but changing diapers at 2 & 3 years old really didn't bother me. I have twins and she came home asking for underwear at 2.5 ,trained within 2 weeks for pee & poop with minimal intervention or accidents, did overnight on her own 2 weeks after that. He was not at all interested, if we suggested he sit & try he would just sit there for like 30 seconds and was clearly restless, etc. We didn't really 'try' until 3 and it still took some time (I will say, teaching him how to stand made peeing much easier for him though him being a bit older/taller prob helped with that)... he had developed encopresis after having constipation issues his whole life so the poop took a really long time, we didn't start to really figure out how to deal with that until about 4 and it has been a year of working on it and it is still not perfect but that is a totally separate issue (and unfortunately has resulted in quite a bit of fighting about going to the bathroom ).  I put off trying to night train b/c we were focusing on the pooping and he didn't seem to care much about wearing a pullup at night (which was wet every single morning) and then at 4 1/2 I finally just asked if he wanted to try it at night and voila, he had like 4 nighttime accidents over the next 2-3 weeks and then was totally  fine at night, so I suppose I should have tried that earlier ...but live & learn.
  
  Trust your gut. I know sometimes it is about the parent's desire (and sometimes preschool requirements, I am thankful ours did not have strict potty training rules) but sometimes it isn't worth teh fight & stress, take a break & revisit.
  

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• hapjack member

  July 2014

  I would keep trying. What worked for me was bringing the potty chair into a main area in the house. Then they could go without missing any action and on their own.

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• emberlee3 member

  July 2014

  It sound like torture for all parties involved.  I would go back to diapers, but keep the potty and underwear available for him to try whenever he wants. 
  

  DS born 8/8/09 and DD born 6/12/12.
  

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