I’ve just spent my weekend holed up in my house with about 30 pairs of 2-3T underwear with various characters on the butt and a small child who we thought was ready to potty train but now we aren’t quite so sure. So what I’d like to know from all you moms out there are TIPS.. TIPS PLEASE! My little guy is currently doing the following: peeing standing up on the big potty when we take him in there, not telling me when he needs to go, and not pooping at all. Scratch that last item, he decided to poop during bath time, lucky us.
My apologies to those of you without children who didn’t want to start your Monday like this. I promise the next post will be for you!!
Baby Bjorn Toilet Trainer, Amazon
Boon Potty Bench, Amazon
We are in the same boat with our 2.5 year old. He’s great at going pee on the potty, but won’t tell us and will only poop in his diaper. But he knows what we are talking about, and knows what to do, so I dunno. Continuing with our pee stops every couple if ours and with diapers because I do not like the poop/underpants combo. Sigh.
I potty trained my 2 year old this past fall. And as much is I felt like I didn’t leave the house for the first 2 weeks, this is what we did:
Pumped her full of liquids and fibrous foods. Then what felt like a million times a days reminded her “when you need to go potty, tell Mommy.” Then stayed basically right next to her for the entire day. When she either told us (yeah!) or started to have an accident (boo!), we would whisk her as fast as possible to the potty. If she went on her own or finished the accident on the potty then she got a treat. Then we talked about how this is the potty, and when we feel like we need to go “make sure you tell Mommy!” I thought it was never going to work. But in about 3 days she got the hang of going pee no problem. For night-time we didn’t put any pull-up type things on her, just regular underwear and limited her drinks a couple of hours before bed. About 1-2 hours after she fell asleep we took her potty (she barely woke up). Most often she went and that saved us most nights from a wet bed (now she’ll get up on her own if she needs to go and we don’t have to limit drinks).
For pooping, I thought she would never get it. Honestly, it wasn’t until she was so good at peeing that we switched the treats to “only for pooping” that she got the pooping thing (Ha! The inspiration of chocolate!). It also helped that her best friend (9 months older) was fully trained and we could tell her that “Makenna goes poop in the big potty too!” Oh the joys of positive peer pressure. But that whole pooping thing took longer for sure. And I was SOOO frustrated. Oh and when she pooped we cleaned her off with a shower (which she didn’t like), but it was easier to clean her that way because lets face it, cleaning up poop is gross.
Hopefully there is something helpful there. We were 100% trained from start to finish in less than 6 weeks (She even graduated herself (after seeing her friend) to the normal potty and now the eye-sore kids one is out of my bathroom.). I know that feels like a life-time at the time, but it’s better than NEVER getting it, right? 🙂
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Oh and I forgot. I had Mom-treats that I gave myself every time she had an accident for the sake of my sanity. I probably gained 5 pounds, but it was worth it.
@Arina when you go out to run errands or whatever are you doing a pull up? Or are you just going potty a lot of times wherever you are?
@Melanna Thank you so much for all the info!!! I feel like 6 weeks is at least something to look forward to! Same question for you, when you went out in public did you just take multiple pee breaks and a change of clothes or did you do pull ups? Tomorrow will be our first outing since we started the whole process and I’m not sure what I should do…kinda leaning towards multiple pee breaks AND pull-ups?
we did the pull up thing when we were out, but only once did she ever have an accident (a block from home). I asked her throughout the trips until she was consistent in telling me, just in case.
Keep a back up outfit in the car so you always have something. It’s just easier!
@Melanna gotcha ok cool. We have done pullups for both outings and have gone potty before, during and after the places but he still goes in the pullup…so who knows. Definitely keeping backup outfits with me!!