Learn me potty training

So the little tyke turned 2 in June, and shortly after we started trying to potty train her. It's coming up on October and she still doesn't really have an interest.

We've bribed her with snacks, put regular underwear under her diaper, showed her what to do, and she really couldn't care less.

There have been a few successes, but never more than one day in a row. Although it was funny when she actually pooped on the potty and waved hi at it. 

So what has the hive done to get away from diapers? While I'm not concerned yet, I'm getting sick of diapers, and would like to get her trained by Christmas optimistically, her birthday not so optimistically. 

I have potty trained four kids.

If you had asked me after the second, I would have told you all sorts of authoritative advice, given you success and failure stories, and felt pretty solid about it all.

Now all I will do is say that it really depends on the kids. Try lots of stuff, don't listen to trick-of-the-week stuff from other parents or worse, adults who have never done it. Be patient and don't punish, you'll get there. Diapers are expensive.

Our son will be 3 at Thanksgiving time this year and in the pass 3 weeks, we had major improvement in potty training. If the kid isn't ready, no treats or anything will convince them otherwise. The big push is actually from daycare and not from the care givers. He's got a buddy in his room that he competes with and potty training is one thing that he sees his buddy doing more than him and regularly wear big boy undies. It's working. The caregiver asked us to bring in undies for him! Still haven't BM'ed on the potty yet, but the caregiver said that's always last.

We started when he turned two also, but since we had our littler girl at the same time we didn't push it too much. One thing that made him react was no diaper and just undies. He hated the feeling of wet undies and would stop peeing (most of the time) and would come to us waddling.

Long story short, I think you'll see a turning point and know when it's time to really push it. Just keep trying knowing that you're actually not trying to potty train your daughter but actually just check whether she is ready to use the potty. At least that's how it seems with our son. YMMV.

When my kids went from diapers to potty I was stoked.   I hated the diaper stage unless I'm back to it in old age.   

We had good luck with "chippies", dried banana chips as a bribe.  The only time you get one is, well you know.

We tried too early with our daughter (i think?), it was lots of accidents, not getting it, wanted to do it, but just got distracted and forget etc.

Tired again a few months later and it just clicked. So I guess dont force it, the kid needs to be ready

Yeah, 2-1/2 isn't too early, but it's also not particularly late.  My best advice (which is 19 years old by now) is to not push it too hard at this point.  3-6 more months will make a big difference.  What you don't want to do is make it a fight.  The kiddo will let you know soon enough.

Although we never tried them, one thing I recommend against is the "pull-up" style diaper/undie hybrid things.  That just introduces an element of ambiguity to the issue.  To me, it seems clearer and easier to grasp if you have things that are recognizably different.  IE, "I'm putting these big kid pants on you, and we don't go in this kind of pants.  If you have trouble with that, it's OK, we can stay with your diapers instead."  The pull-ups are diapers that look like big kid underpants... I see that as confusing to a young mind working to grasp a concept.

I trained a boy. He really liked the concept of watching himself pee on Some thing. The hardest part was keeping him from peeing on the plants on the balcony. 

Hardest thing for me was when the seat fell down on his little pechaco, Mom was frantic; he's fine.

Time and patience. Mine turns 3 in November and we're finally at the "rarely has an accident" stage but it does still happen. Three is the typical potty training age nowadays so it's still early yet. Just give it time. Make sure you don't give her any of the potty treats she likes at any time other than as a reward for going potty. Maybe give yourself one each time you go potty, with her watching and listening.

In reply to mndsm :

What got me trained at daycare was wanting to make bubbles like the big kids. I don't think that will work so well with the girl. 

So it looks like most of you are in my train of thought, she'll probably come around closer to 3 than 2. Her sister was 18 months, so her mom has been pushing it a bit more I have. At least she doesn't have a shortage of examples, my mom here, her sister mom and grandma at her mom's house, and no one can go to the restroom without her, she's just not super interested. At least she'll sit there and pretend, but it's more an excuse to play with toilet paper. 

Duke, I agree about the pull ups, I think they send the wrong message and confuse the kid. They're also not nearly as absorbent which turns into fights to change them more often. 

I haven't tried just regular underwear yet, but putting them under her diaper I thought would annoy her and let her mom when she went, but she really didn't care. I'll try them again in a week or so. 

We've been using m&MS as a bribe. It's the only time she gets them and she likes them so it should work in theory. This week she started taking her doll in and holding her over the potty trying to get extra m&ms, but it didn't work. 

In reply to 914Driver :

Kid #1 did that, it was black and blue.

My daughter was potty trained, then started falling back and having lots of "accidents"--and one day, near the end of my patience after finding her yet again in a wet pullup, I somewhat frantically asked her why, why, WHY she wasn't going in the potty. 

She pondered that for a minute, then said, "Well... it's nice and warm."

At that point I realized that what we had was a service issue--namely, I was providing too prompt of service. So I let her experience a couple of soggy-arsed, cold, wet butts... and she started telling me when she had to go potty.

She's out of college now and still doesn't pee her pants, so I guess that worked. Though I'm pretty sure your kid's also going to be using the potty by that stage; and that is probably a better point. As I tell friends who freak over these childhood milestones that aren't always met exactly on schedule, even the freakiest people you see at Walmart seem to be able to use a potty and drink out of a cup. It happens, whether you want it to or not. (The "not" part comes when you realize that little-little kids have to go to the bathroom a lot. Get ready to meet every public toilet in the world.)

Margie

This thread is hilarious, I am laughing now, but my daughter is fastly approaching the potty training age.

The only reason pull ups are a good thing, is so you can get the diaper back on the kid in a public toilet without laying them on their back next to a toilet. You can just pull up the diaper and be on your way. Ever try to strap on a normal diaper on a standing kid? It doesn't work the best but is possible. The whole make them look like undies is silly, since my son knows the difference between undies and diapers. The pictures on them are what he likes, not the fake seams of underwear; he probably doesn't have the perception to even notice that it's supposed to be undies printed on them.

Duke said:

Although we never tried them, one thing I recommend against is the "pull-up" style diaper/undie hybrid things.  To me that just introduces an element of ambiguity to the issue.  To me, it seems clearer and easier to grasp if you have things that are recognizably different.  IE, "I'm putting these big kid pants on you, and we don't go in this kind of pants.  If you have trouble with that, it's OK, we can stay with your diapers instead."  The pull-ups are diapers that look like big kid underpants... I see that as confusing to a young mind working to grasp a concept.

I agree with this. My daughter is 3 and rarely has an accident these days but the "training pants" are basically an assurance that she will.

We're that family that carries around a potty in the back of the car and ask her everywhere we go that has a bathroom if she needs to go. Giving them the opportunity, what seems like all the time, really helps and breaks them out of whatever the distraction of the moment is.

She was doing pretty well before we moved from California to Pennsylvania a year ago but the change caused a major regression. Time, patience, and constant reinforcement.

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I have done many long road trips with potty training kids.

"I have to potty!!!"

"ok, is it an emergency?" (thinking, maybe we can find a coffee shop, Panera, something clean and with an additional use)

"YEEEEEEESSSS!!!!"

and then you proceed to clean the truck stop bathroom with half of the wipes in your container, making it the cleanest bathroom on route 81, cleaner than it has ever been, including when it was built, and you step back and say "ok, let's get you on the potty" and they say

"well, I don't have to go now"

Repeat. Often. If you ever went into a bathroom on route 81 and noticed that the bathroom was extremely clean, you're welcome.

We have hardwood floors and really hydrophobic carpet. And my wife is a stay at home mom.

But my four girls went around the house in long dresses with bare butts underneath and had to clean up their wet messes with mama doing quality control. The little potty was next to the real potty so every time mama went, they would come along and try too. You remove all the burden of unwrapping everything while at home. We had very few solid accidents. Liquids were frequent for about a month. Discomfort seems to be the best motivator, either sitting in the wet clothes or cleaning up the mess. Scheduled trips is also valuable as they have physical control but generally don't have the forethought to plan the correct length of time.

My youngest was fully trained and then went into diapers to travel across country. It took months to get her retrained.

YMMV

One thing that worked for me was the local supermarket.  Don't laugh, they have a play room where you can sign your kids in while you shop.  The rule was that you had to be 3 and potty trained.  My daughter wanted to go in so bad, so we would stand in front of the big window and watch the other kids play.  She'd beg me to go in, but I would gently remind her that she would have to wait until she was potty trained.  That sped things up considerably.  

I'm with Tuna on the four kids and realizing that any particular advice may or may not work. If your advice doesn't work on your own kids it's unlikely to work on a kid you don't know. 

Each of my four had their own motivations. We used rewards ranging from stickers to jelly beans. Boys both spent time outside with no bottoms until they got the hang of things. We still have a picture of Deucekid#2 with a hooded sweatshirt, a stocking cap, and no pants playing in the yard. They all made it to three year old preschool in underwear. My mom always said that nobody wears a diaper to high school, so eventually it will work. I still carry a towel in my truck out of habit and have discarded more than one pair of underwear at a truck stop. 

Try things. Make peeing yourself a little uncomfortable and using the potty really cool. She'll get it. 

Try everything..

However, when you make the switch to diapers.. don't go back.. did that.. it's bad.

each kid is different, some easy and some difficult.

Keep extra clothes and underwear with you at all times.

Buy lots of underwear and then also buy one of these. 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/BISSELL-Little-Green-Portable-Spot-and-Stain-Cleaner-1400M/35702152?wmlspartner=wmtlabs&adid=22222222222024377484&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=e&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=10357857308&wl4=kwd-1103067647823&wl12=35702152_0&wl14=mean%20grean%20bissell&veh=sem

Peeing your pants is kind of like smoking or heroin.  No matter what other people try to do to help, you're not gonna quit until you decide you want to quit.

Our first hated the feeling of being messy in any way.  We gave her regular underwear, she wet it once or twice, then decided it felt icky and just like that, potty-trained.  The middle one took a bit longer, but was eager to please in general, so she potty-trained with some treat-based motivation.  The little one apparently resents us for bringing her into the world and wishes to crush our spirit so she steadfastly refused to potty-train until we had pretty much given up and then she decided to do it on her terms.  We tried the same tricks on multiple kids and no one thing worked because they all had different motivations.

Great thread!  I have a 21 month old and 1 on the way.

The 21 month old is showing interest and tells us when she goes poopy but has no interest in actually doing it on the potty.

Glad I'm not alone.

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