Potty Training - Austin,TX

Based on my experience, most 2 and a half yr. old boys are not ready. I think it's a rare thing to find a boy under 3 who is ready to stop all the busy things they are doing to go potty. Some boys have to be a little older than 3. Don't think that the 3rd birthday is a magic day.

I would put the diapers back on and forget about it for awhile. Sounds like it has caused stress and I'd let it go for awhile.

We did not potty train our children until their were 3 because they simply were not interested. Finally, they were ready, and we committed to spending a few days at home. Every 20 minutes, we put them on the potty and set the timer for 5 minutes. If they peed or pooped, they got M & M's and a sticker. When they earned 20 stickers, they got to go to Target and pick out a toy. It was tedious, but it worked. A lot of people do not agree with the reward system, but it worked and it was worth it.

Well Ladies, I must say I agree with waiting until age 3.
I have a 19 yr old son & at 2 he would poop in the potty but not pee! So I put the diapers back on & waited until he was 3, it was a breeze! I am now raising another son, age 21 months & I am not even going to try to potty train him until next year, when he is around 3. The frustration on mom & child when a child isn't 100% ready, just isn't worth it. I'll keep buying diapers another year and then I will not have the frustration of potty training. At 3 they comprehend much better & are able to tell you & it definitely goes smoother :)

If it were me L., i'd put the diapers back on him & wait it out.
I also have twin girls who are 18 & when I was potty training them, a friend suggested, get rid of the pull-ups because it can confuse them. It felt like a diaper to them, she told me if i'd do that the potty training would go better, & it did!
I put the thick cloth training pants on them & if we went somewhere I put rubberpants over them incase they were to have an accident. Worked great!

If you need a small potty to take on trips with you, Target sells the small very light weight ones that are great! they come in all colors, & do not take up much room :)
I have 5 yr old twins girls also (yes I'm blessed with a house full of children!!) I kept a potty chair in a bag in my suburban for them until they were hold enough to hold it, until we got to a "clean" restroom somwhere.
That too worked great for us!

I too have a 2 1/2 year-old. He will be 3 in October. He is just now showing some interest in the potty. We have a little training potty and a smaller seat for the big potty. He will not sit on the big toilet yet. He will go pee when we remind him or before we put diaper/underwear on him. But, he doesn't remember himself. He does not poop in the potty yet either. We haven't even attempted that yet. Also, he is not able to get his undies and pants/shorts up and down by himself most of the time. I'm not pushing too hard now, I give him the option of underwear or diaper. We used pull-ups at first with my almost 5 year-old daughter. I do not advise using them. They seem great and easy...and they are to a point. However, they also absorb so much that the wetness didn't bother my daughter enough. She had little motivation for the potty while using those. With undies, she felt wet and didn't like it. I've done cloth diapers part of the time with my son, so I ordered some cloth training pants that have a water proof lining. They are all-in-one, but much slimmer than a cloth diaper. So far they seem to work well during the day. Although, like I mentioned we are not hitting it hard yet. I have some friends that claim their child was potty trained by two or even 18 months. However, the children have to constantly be reminded and cannot go alone. So, while I'm sure there are a few kids out there that are ready by two...I think the parents are the one's that are trained not the kids. Until the child can go totally by him/herself, I don't consider them "Potty Trained". My Mom has had many of her friends tell her that their daughters/sons waited to potty train their second or third child until he/she was three. So I am trying not to let the peer pressure get to me. Also, FYI...my daughter still has occasional accidents at night. I asked her doctor about it and she said that most kids are not ready to go all night until they are 5 or 6 years-old. Some just can't wake up enough to understand what their body is telling them. Hope this helps. If you find that anything in particular helps...please post it. I'm sure lots of other Moms would like every advantage they can get.

It doesn't sound like he is ready. It doesn't matter how ready you are, if he isn't ready then it won't happen. In fact you might delay the process by trying to push it on him before he is ready.

It is an inconvenience for you, but he will eventually be trained. It is a good sign that he is telling you he is wet, but he is not quite there yet. Keep the potty (or potty seat) visible in the bathroom so he sees it, let him see other family members using the potty, but don't push it.

One tip, when he is ready, don't bother with training pants or pull-ups - they are confusing and are just marketed by diaper companies to continue taking your money. Put him straight into underwear - you will have to deal with some accidents, but if he is truly ready, the accidents won't last long (although the poo training takes longer.)

Good luck!

The idea of the reward certainly works. I have found that boys DO like to play more than they like to go to the potty. So making going to the potty "fun" can often be the trick for boys. My daughter discovered pretty big girls panties and I told her that she had to use her potty all the time before she could have big girl panties. A week later we were buying panties and we never looked back. She just needed incentive. The boys, however, could have cared less about "big boy underwear". They really just wanted to play. Cheerios or fruit loops in the toilet to use for target practice was incentive enough for them. In the beginning, dad used the cheerios and demonstrated...that was impressive to them! They wanted to go all the time. I read a book that said once you get them going you should fill them full of drinks all the time and they will need to go more often, giving them more frequent practice and results will happen much quicker. I read that after all my kids were potty trained, but it makes sense to me. Establish the routine through practice...less accidents. "Number 2" takes a bit longer but that is easier to hold than urine, and they don't do that as often. Hope this helps a little...or at least gives you one more thing to try. They are all different! You just never know what might work.

I agree with reward. It may be effective if it's immediate and strictly for going potty in the potty. Try putting a nice loud bell or other fun noisemaker. Ring it every single time you or hubby go potty. I bet your son becomes interested in a hurry since he only gets to ring it if he potties. Might let your other son do it too. Blessings!

REWARDS! an m&m, a dinner mint, a dum dum, sticker, time outside blowing bubbles... whatever! I'm all for rewarding! My 19 month old is potty trained and as soon as she hops off the pot, she says "prize?" LOL. It doesn't have to be food or gift. It can be tv time, or being able to watch a favorite show or movie or something. I recently bought her a play kitchen as her BIG FINAL PRIZE. My plan is to get stickers and a chart. As soon as she fills up the chart, she can have her BIG PRIZE. It just gives some good incentive to not be lazy and go in their diapers! My sister in law bought her daughter a pretty necklace that she gave her only when she was completely potty trained. She told her only BIG girls can wear jewelry and that made little one want it so much more! It was from James Avery and said "little sister". She was trained in about a week after that!!

We are always on the go too. I didn't buy a travel potty, I just take our potty from the house with us. It's small enough to fit in the back of any car. We've pulled over multiple times for her to use it too. I just put an HEB sack in it and a paper towel (so it doesn't splash). Its easy clean up on the road.

Sorry for the novel!!! Good Luck! Please send an update and let us know how he's doing!!!

Hi L., does your 2 year old have a favorite character? Take him to the store, have him pick out his underwear with the character on them, then let him walk around the house with them on give alots of praise with the big boy underwear. This worked with my 2 year old.

I waited until my son was completely ready (he was 3) and he potty learned in a few days. He's had very few accidents (and his accidents were always related to overalls or playing at a birthday party and not going in time) - I could count on one hand how many accidents he's had in 1 year. He's fully potty learned, too, and has always used the potty for both pee and poo. Again, though, I waited until he showed me all the signs of being ready.

Your son doesn't sound ready at all to me - he tells you he dosn't want to be a "big boy". It sounds like your first potty trained easily, but by their ages it seems as though # 2 hadn't been born yet. # 2 is only 2.5 (which is still young) AND he has a baby brother. That can affect him wanting to do it.

Potty learning is about more than just an age and physical readiness. It's about emotional readiness, too. He doesn't sound emotionally ready to do it if he's telling you he does NOT want to do it.

Many experts believe that children aren't physically AND emotionally ready till age three. ALso remember, despite your experience with your first son, that boys are often potty learned after girls. Three really is an ideal age where they really understand things. My daughter started showing interest at 18 months, but I knew she wasn't really ready. She's 2 and I'm in no hurry to push it along because i don't want a bunch of regressions if she wasn't truly ready.

Maybe give it a couple of months and see if he's ready again. When you do, you must remain consistent (as you've seen!). But I would really wait if I were you. Then you could give him lots of naked time for training purposes, and remind him every 15 minutes. Don't use paper pull ups (glorified diapers). We are cloth diaper users here, so I used cloth training pants, too. My son couldn't pull undies down well enough, but the Potty Scotty training undies he was able to do easily. They have a small bit of absorbing material in the middle to catch the beginning of accidents - enough to keep your floor dry, but still lets the child feel wet. Hope that helps!

What worked well for my oldest son a sticker chart on the fridge. We had a potty chart of a train with several train cars. Everytime he went potty on the potty, he got to put a sticker on the chart. We had it on the fridge, so I refered to it a lot when we were in the kitchen together on good he was doing to get so many stickers. When the chart was filled up, he got to take it to the store and "buy" something with it. For us it was a movie. He even "paid" for the movie himself by giving the sticker chart to the cashier as payment and she handed him the movie. Of course, we slipped her the money when he wasn't looking and she slipped us the sticker chart.

Once he had gotten the hang of going in the potty, he started to get stickers for being dry before he sat on the potty. He got 2 stickers for pooping on the potty.

Good luck.

if you have a place what we did was planted a rose bush and had him potty outside it gives you 2 great things he is learning potty can be good and you will have the largest best smelling roses anywhere we did this with our son he he was train in about 2 weeks
good luck

I don't have alot of advice, since my son is only 9months, but I have a suggestion for being in the car. We have days when that is just going to happen. Before we moved here we lived in Hawaii, & just going to the store can take an hour to get there if traffic is bad. So one day I was in our car with my daughter(in a parking lot) & noticed a lady come to her car with her son. she opened the back pulled out a potty chair sat him on it & when he was done dumped the stuff in a garbage can & went on with her day. I was a little taken back by it at first, but I did understand. My daughter had had a few accidents because there was no where to stop. I don't know if this helps or not, but I thought I would throw it out there.

My boss's Dr told her that boys are easiest to train when they are 3. So she waited til the day they were 3, sat them on the potty and explained it all, and that is all it took. But the experiance of myself and most moms I know is that they have to want it. I told my daughter that she was not going to get to move up to the next classroom at school until she learned, and she FINALLY decided that she wanted to. My neighbors boy was told that he could not go swimming with his friends anymore till he stopped dirting his pants because he can't get the pool water dirty. Then he stopped. Like magic.