Potty-training

Three weeks into proper potty training and we finally got a poo on the potty!

He got wees sussed on day one, apart from the occasional minor accident. Today he came home from pre-school wearing some yellow frilly Fifi & The Flowertots knickers. Presumably some lucky girl has been sent home in his red Roary pants...

haha. bee got the poop down right away. the pee has been the trickiest for us. now shes wearing underpants at home but we play it safe with pull ups when we go out.

actually i should say pp does. hes pretty much done 100% of the potty training from day one. im more a 'you need to go now??? ugh just do it in your diaper. dont worry about it' parent

most horrifying moment so far: when i realized shes referring to her underwear as 'panties'.

We didn't get started with Tallulah until late last summer (she was already older than Ava had been when she started) and it was a struggle and we sort of gave up, resigning ourselves to a winter of pull-ups. Starting afresh in February this year, we instigated a reward system (stickers for #1, chocolate buttons for #2) and while she was excellent with weeing, she completely failed to recognise when she needed a poo. As we've had her in underwear the whole time (pull-ups only at night), that became rather expensive. Practically every other day we'd have to dump another pair of pants in a nappy sack in some public loo's bin. I got used to carrying a spare change of clothes everywhere in my camera bag.

About three weeks ago she finally cracked it. A six-day holiday in Europe by train and the only accident she had was my fault - taking her on a complete tour of the menswear section at Ilium in Copenhagen in a fruitless search for the loos when she was clearly desperate. She's still in pull-ups at night but they're always dry and we probably only need to buy one more packet of those. Like, EVER! As we phase those out, we'll also encourage her to be as self-sufficient as Ava (i.e., we don't need to come in with her, she can clean herself up).

Amazing to think this phase (started in July 2007 with Ava) will finally be over.

We are having exactly the same issues with Alice re. pooing, sigh. Did you start doing anything different or did Lulu just get there on her own? Almost every day A. comes home from nursery in different clothes and I don't know how far their tolerance will stretch (they've also had her in the sink for a complete wash-down on a couple of particularly messy occasions). I'm not sure whether she has a conscious fear of going for a poo or whether she just doesn't realise until it's too late.

We had three weeks of poo accidents before cracking it. In the end outright bribery did the trick -- thank god for Smarties.

Ok, I'm definitely going to try the bribery route now. Alice starts 'big nursery' (separate building for the 3-5 year olds) next week and it's time to crack this thing.

Lulu seemed to just get it. She went from "stops playing, fleeting look of concentration on her face, retreats behind sofa and says, 'Don't be cross with me.'" to sing-song "I need the toyyet!" in about two days. She doesn't even ask for the choc buttons any more.

However: tried her in pants last night and they were a little damp this morning, so the Age of the Pull-Up is not quite over.

I think we're going to jump on the bandwagon. A's been playing at it at nursery but due to poo issues (witholding and becoming constipated = horrible never ending misery) I've not wanted to push it at home. That issue seems to have cleared itself up now so I think it may well be all systems go.

Not sure how to approach our commute though, what does anyone think? A and I spend an hour and 15 mins each way travelling into work/nursery on the train, not exactly great potty training territory....

TBH if he's not capable of going that long between potty visits then he's probably not ready to train. So maybe take a few days off work, put him in pants and see how he goes -- if he can last 2-3hrs then as long as he wees before you go then he should be fine. Porta-potties are a godsend at a pinch!

I hadn't thought about it that way but you're right. Will be trying pant free on sunday and monday and see how we get on!

How's it going, Vicky? Amazingly Howie has been in pants at night for two weeks now, and we decided to go cold turkey to ditch the potty a couple of days ago.

I gave up again. I don't want to push it and have more poo issues, and he was never going of his own accord. They're still using the potty at nursery and some days he's fine and others he comes home with lots of wet pants. I'm going to wait a bit longer and see whether he starts going of his own accord rather than just being reminded to go.

Dry at night, clever boy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydWMY8cYPUU

"when its a number two i look like number one" lolz

just makes me think of:

"http://lh5.ggpht.com/_FQf_pQ4IapQ/R9u64H8x3oI/AAAAAAAAACk/TKk9F7S_8zo/Carls+hotpants!!.JPG";

oh tags

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_FQf_pQ4IapQ/R9u64H8x3oI/AAAAAAAAACk/TKk9F7S_8zo/Carls+hotpants!!.JPG

We start Elisabeth in july. Hurrah! I am fed with (expensive) pampers. Lol

I hear that. At least we only have one lot of nappies now -- but I'm not planning on training A 'til he's three so we've got another two years to go!

My friend claimed both her kids did it before the age of two?!? Anyway I'll be really happy that part's over. Potty training is not my forte. :-(

http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/cat_toilet.jpg

haha. i am scared of potty training, but i guess we'll have to get going on it soon. our friends with a slightly older kid did this potty training "boot camp" kind of thing where it was like an intense weekend of not leaving the house ... which sounded terrible, but it seems to have worked?
anyhoo, my daughter's main verbal thing now is "book-a-book-a-book-a!" repeated over and over when she wants to read a book. or read another book.

― tylerw, Wednesday, 16 March 2011 17:56 (Yesterday) [IP: 74.63.138.99] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think it doesn't have to be that bad! in our experience it took a good 15 minutes of insisting that he sit on the toilet/potty, which wasn't easy, but we bribed him with stories and promises. but that kind of broke his resistance.

now we insist he sits on the potty every, ooh i don't know 30 minutes? 45 minutes? it's been going on now for 2 weeks and we're starting to get to the point where we believe him when he claims to not need to pee. as far as going out goes, we bring lots of changes of clothes. we don't actually need them most of the time. he only wears a nappy at bedtime now.

i recommend a nice high step for the toilet. the little low steps aren't high enough to get on there. i also recommend one of these potties - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0045ILEG2/ref=asc_df_B0045ILEG22318536?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B0045ILEG2

- the seat part can go on the real toilet if you want
- there's a little pan which is a lot easier to wash out than the entire potty
- it LOOKS more like a real toilet, which can be good (if they want to do what you do)

thx for the tips! yeah, i guess the first step is getting one of these potties.

Arggggggggggggggh.

go on

we're getting going on this. she actually seems pretty ready to go, I think it's mainly down to us adjusting to the new lifestyle. diapers are easier!

She's been peeing on the toilet since the summer. then, when the twins were born, we kind of didn't push her to poop on her potty at all. We'd offer, but she'd always say "not yet, but pretty soon." so now she's on the waiting list for a pre-school in our neighbourhood that asks for kids to be 100% toilet trained. So we started saing, okay, now you poop on your potty. And after about a week, she finally did. Twice. Since then she's peed her pants like three times a day, sometimes doesn't even say anything until we change activities or whatever. And she craps her pants now too. And I just started back at work this weekend doing three 12-hour shifts.
I know that a little regression is normal. I just wish it was over.

Nd obviously I can't let her know how effing sick I am of cleaning up her piss and shit, so I'm venting here.

well, get ready for another step back when she starts preschool :(

my son has had no accidents for like (looks back and reads thread) 10 months but now he's started nursery school and in the first week he peed his pants like five times.

you might need to go back to the whole every-half-hour-she-sits-on-the-potty-regardless-of-whether-she-wants-to schtick

diapers are easier

this is the thing. it is really at least as much about the parents being ready, as the kid, imo

our experience seems to have been a bit unusual - she took to peeing on the toilet with pretty much no problem. we did the thing where you make 'em drink a whole lot and then 20 minutes later put them on the toilet so that they connect the feeling of needing to pee with being on the toilet and then after a little bit they do it on their own. pooping was much harder - she would just hold it until we put a diaper on her before going to bed, and THEN she would take a dump. It wasn't until we refused to put a diaper on her for the night until AFTER she'd pooped on the toilet that she started to get it. It took awhile though. Now at 4 yo she's poopin like a champ on the regular before she goes to bed.

and yeah she started a preschool last September that required her to be "100% potty-trained". Which she wasn't at the time, really, cuz she was still pooping in a diaper at night, but we took the chance that she wouldn't be pooping during the day and it all worked out.

Beeps is about to hit 5 y/o in early March. She is potty trained but if she is doing something she likes ie watching a tv show she likes or drawing, she will just pee in her pants. I know this is not a medical issue. I also know you shouldnt punish children for not using the potty because they end up setting cats on fire and eventually morph into serial killers.
Anyway, we've talked to her about it. Ive even told her that when she starts kindergarten in august she will get lunch detention for peeing her pants (fact btw). Ive also pointed out that its getting to the stage where everyone ij her class is fully potty trained and if she is still peeing her pants she'll become known as the girl who smells like pee for years to come. None of this has had an effect. Now we are seriously considering time outs. Is this and my previous attempts at shame going to fuck her up? Anyone else been in this situation?

Time-outs would be legit and not an overreaction imho. We always tried to make it more of a business transaction than a shaming though. "You owe me 15 minutes in time-out, payable immediately. Sorry, no appeal." Take the drama out of it and they'll be less likely to turn into pet torturers or whatever.

or make her sit on the toilet every 1/2 hr - she will maybe realize she prefers the alternative?

I am paying attention here, reading this thread closely and keeping things in mind because this is something I fear approaching in the future. I have only had dogs, cats and a rabbit and they all taught themselves. I have heard potty training gone wrong can lead to all sorts of behavioral and emotional issues which only serves to up the pressure. I cam here thinking there would be book titles but quickly realized that is of no use because every child and situation is different.

I have one very vivid memory of sitting on the potty and having my mother, grandfather and the next door neighbors, who were an older couple, in the bathroom all staring down at me saying different things to encourage me to poop. The neighbor dangled a piece of candy in my face. I can't remember how all that made me feel though.

I have been told I used a potty chair that was on display in a window at a JC Penney's and what an embarrassing mess that was for my mom. I can't remember that incident but I truly believe it is the source of these disturbing recurring dreams I have had my whole life of defecating in public.

you were workin on that bucket list early..

started doing this in earnest over the weekend -- and things went great! at least at first... kid told us when she had to pee, seemed to get the mechanics of the whole process. except she didn't poop! she went from Friday afternoon to Monday night without doing it -- which became stressful.... but she finally did it right before bedtime last night. hopefully she'll be more regular from now on. eek!

Haha that has happened to us a few times. That's gotta feel fucking magnificent when it finally happens

yes there was much rejoicing.
other than that little hiccup, she is doing remarkably well! but talk to me next week, it'll probably be another story.

this is going pretty well, surprisingly enough. she seems able/willing to hold it if we're not near a restroom while out and about. only issue is that in other regards she's sort of regressed -- wants to be held all the time, is super-clingy. Not entirely sure if this is potty-training related, but it seems likely. And she was *already* super clingy, so it's getting a little ridiculous -- especially for my wife, since she's the favored nurturer at the moment.