Potty Training HELP!

What finally worked with my son was to just leave him naked. I tried everything and was about to give up when I just quit putting pants on him. Just keep asking him to go pee. Within 2 days he was potty trained, (with a few accidents). A few other moms had told me to try this, and it works.

unfortunately by forcing a child to potty train you make the diaper stage last longer. have you tried just taking the pull ups away, we did that with my daughter and 3 days later she was potty trained, but she didnt fight it she liked the big girl panties... good luck ps remember no one goes to college in diapers!

My friends nearly 4 year old finally potty trained when he learned it was required to attend "school". I would recommend pressuring him more. The experts of this generation warn against too much pressure so most of us tend to use too little.

I fought my son about toothbrushing and it looked cruel and horrible when I'd put him in a headlock to hold him down and sing "this is the way we brush our teeth". It took 2 weeks of torture but now he's totally fine with it. No more headlocks but we still sing. Boys are weird like that.

Good luck.

E.

if you figure it out please send me an e-mail. im in the very same boat. 3 1/2 yr old that just refuses with every bribe i can think of. my ped says that he will go when he is ready but he starts pre-school in sept. and has to be potty trained!! good luck.

J., i just reponded to another mommy as desperate as you are a few weeks ago here on this Q&A forum about the same issue! My youngest is also 3 1/2, and he did'nt particularly want to go on the potty either. I was in the same boat you are...pregnant, and not wanting 2 in diapers! (I have 6 weeks left to go now, before #4 arrives!) I got my butt in gear and changed my whole approach to potty training. I found that with him, i could'nt push him or force him. He had to do it on his own terms and of his own free will. I stopped asking him 80 times a day if he had to go potty, and instead, became acutely aware of his body language and could tell when he actually HAD to go. Then, i would either sit him on the potty, or suggest to him that he go and sit on it himself like a big boy. Also, ditch the pull ups. No matter what the manufacturers say, they are alot like diapers, so the kids don't mind going in them. Even the ones that claim to have the "Cool alert" sensation never phased my son. But, as soon as i switched him into big boy underwear, things improved. I also had let him pick out the ones he wanted with the cartoon characters he liked on them. He realized he did'nt want to soil HIS new underwear that HE picked out. I reinforced to him how is is a "Big Boy" now like Daddy is. We gave him a "potty party" everytime he went by himself...which was basically the whole family oohing and ahhing over his accomplishment! Then, his older sisters would let him pick out a toy of theirs that was normally off-limits to play with for a bit. We'd have him flush all by himself, which he thought was a big deal...and he told his poopy and pee-pee "Bye Bye" as it went down! Sounds corny, but it worked! The main issue is control. Potty training is a control issue/ power struggle with toddlers. Especially boys. Let them take the lead, and they'll run with it. Like i said, i stopped asking my son ALL the time if he had to go. I ditched the pull-ups. I watched for signs that he had to go and THEN prompted him. Give it a shot. Once i changed my approach, it took no time for him to do it himself. He's had very few accidents, and no slide backs. My son has now been fully potty trained for the last three months! So, i managed to accomplish it before my 4th child came along, i think you can too! Good luck!!!

I don't know if this wil heop you or not, but here goes. With both of my older boys, I just started putting them in big boy underwear at all times except bedtime. My oldest son (now 10) was especially difficult. I worked with him at 2, and gave up. I started again at 3, still with difficulties. He was just way to busy to take time out to go potty. With the big boy underwear, he eventually realized that it was faster just to go to the potty than to have to get cleaned up after an accident. Also, with boys, you can try to let them pee outside. It can be very exciting to a little one to get to go outside!! I wish you luck!!

My son is almost 3 and we are having the same problem. He has NO desire to use the potty. I ask him and tell him about how big boys use the potty but he doesn't care. We're going on vacation at the end of July and we will be flying so I figure we'd really start working on it after that. Let us know how things go and what works for you.

My son worked really well with the "Toilet Training in Less than a Day" method. We modified it a bit because the book was written in the 70s, but he enjoyed "teaching" a doll how to use the toilet, and completely understood what he was supposed to do. The first attempt (at about 25 months) didn't work because he had no interest in it. My husband spent probably 4 or 5 hours with him the first try. We completely dropped it for a while after that. The second try was about 2 months later, and I just decided to try to get him excited about using the potty one morning. He was consistently waking up dry for weeks at a time. He has been in underwear (just plain white briefs) ever since. He was ready, and enjoyed the game we made of it. He had a few accidents the first week (maybe 3 or 4), and it took a little longer to get him to poop in the toilet, but within a week, I didn't have to ask him if he needed to go - he would just go do it himself, and run out with his pants down to ask for help getting them back on. We did continue with diapers at bedtime because, for a while, as soon as we would try to put him to bed with undies, he would have an accident. It didn't interfere with his potty training at all.

Something else I did a little differently is that I never used a potty chair. We had one, and we even left it out for him a lot when he was between 18 and 24 months. He liked to use it as a child sized chair but refused to sit on it when his pants were down. So, I got a seat that goes right on the toilet and a step-stool. It works very well, and I don't have a potty chair to clean!

My daughter just turned two. And although she is still in diapers, I know what I am going to do. Thank God for three older sisters all with kids. They all did theirs the same way and it worked great for all of them. When they show signs that they fully understand what pottying is and how to do it in the potty, then they are ready. Kaylee went poopy in the potty several weeks ago and has gone pee pee several times, but she is being selective, so we are going to do it to her soon, but we are giving her just a little bit, only because we just got rid of her pacifier(smoothly too).
Anyways, we are going to make a trip to the store together, and I am going to tell her all about how it is time to be a big girl like Mommy and all her cousins and that it is time to start using the potty and use big girl underwear. I will let her pick out some that she would like to purchase and buy a supply of underwear. Then when we get home I will ask her if she would like to wear a pair. I am sure she will say yes, but even if she says no, I will tell her that diapers are for babies and she is too big for them and change her anyway. Instruct her that everytime she goes potty she has to go in the potty from now on, or else she will get very yucky. Supposidly, most of my nieces and nephews were trained over a weekend. Most don't want to pee on themselves(especially poop) and will get the idea after only a few times. So make sure you are planning on spending that weeked at home. It is up to you wheather you have them help clean up the mess or not. I think I will attempt to have her help me, but we will see how it goes, I don't want her to be traumitized by the event and see it as punishment. I just don't want her to think there is any other option.

I had a hard time with both my daughters but then I have heard boys are sometimes harder. I have a friend that has used fruit loops in the toilet but that was to teach her son to aim. All I can say is when you ask him and he says no I would still make him try. I had to and still do this with my youngest/

Mandie~

I trained my little boy in 3 days, he was 3 months shy of turning 3 years old. What I did was when he first woke up, I brought a potty chair out to the livingroom and sat him on it in front of his favorite cartoons on the tv and we sat there until he went potty. It literally took him about an hour of sitting there, but as long as I was sitting beside him and he was watching his favorite shows, I was reading to him, or we were coloring, he didn't mind. By the way, with both of my kids, there were a couple of 2 hour potty sessions before they went potty, but even though it seems impossible that your child may sit there that long, they actually love it because their mommy is completely focused and paying total attention to them the whole time. And, I'll add that my little boy is totally BUSY, but would sit there for 2 hours as long as I entertained him. If he started wanting up, I would just find something else really fun for us to do. Then when he finally went, I went nuts about how excited I was about him going potty, let him pick out a sticker for his sticker potty chart that I'd made out of poster board and decorated the night before, and set the timer on my oven for one hour. When the timer went off, I sat him on the potty chair again until he went and repeated this process all day. The first day is the hardest one as far as waiting for them to go potty. But, the second day he started going almost immediately after I sat him down on the potty chair. I also would put sweats or corduroys on him starting day one, with a pair of thick socks so that when he had accidents, if any hit the carpet it was only a tiny bit. And, he WILL have accidents, a lot of them, but it doesn't mean that he isn't ready, it just means that he's in the process of getting potty trained. On the third day, my little boy actually had the most accidents. He was pooping in his underwear the day before, so I'd decided that on the third day, I would let him run around with no underwear on because if he felt nothing against his butt, he wouldn't poop, but as soon as he had underwear or whatever on, he would immediately poop. So, my carpet shampooer stayed in the livingroom all day that day and I think we had about 9 accidents! But, in the afternoon he said he needed underwear on and I knew that he needed to go poopy, so I sat him down on the toilet. (the day before, once he'd started going potty immediately after sitting him on the potty chair, I moved him onto the toilet. I hadn't started him on it in the beginning because who wants to sit on a toilet in a bathroom for hours?? It's best to put them somewhere where they don't mind sitting) Anyway, he kept saying that he didn't have to go once I'd sit him on the toilet, but for about 20 minutes, he was changing his mind back and forth. I'd sit him on the toilet, he'd say no, then say he had to go potty, then say no. Eventually, he couldn't hold it and he ended up pooping in the potty. I'd gone to the dollar tree and bought a bag full of "poop award toys" and he got to stick his hand in and pick one. So, on the fourth day, we woke up and he started telling me he had to go potty and that was the end of my 3 days of terror! Honestly, it's really hard, but if you do it this way, basically devote a few days to it and not do anything but potty train, not run errands and such, children will train and what's best is that they'll do it very quickly. Oh, another thing, I started cutting off juice one hour before bedtime on the first day that I started potty training, and after about 3 dry diapers in a row in the morning, I cut off diapers at night too. It was about a week after potty training that I completely stopped putting him in diapers. Now, I did the same thing with my daughter when she was 26 months, and she took about 5 or 6 days to potty train and she was in pullups at night for about 2 months or so. Potty training isn't something that a child is going to just start doing on their own in most cases. Think of it as training a puppy. We all know how many accidents a puppy has when you first start house training it. I'm not saying kids are like puppies, so let's not jump to that conclusion, but what I'm saying is that you don't just give up with a puppy because "they aren't ready". You stay consistent and keep pushing until the dog eventually learns where it goes potty. Well, a child needs to be pushed and have consistency if they're ever going to learn that they are not going to be going potty in their diapers anymore and that they are going to be in underwear now. If you keep taking breaks, or you just "expect" them to not have many accidents, than you'll never think they're ready. My grandma trained all her children at around 12 months, so don't pay any attention to certain ages that are appropriate to potty training, just decided when YOU are ready and go for it. If the mommy's ready and willing to take the time to do it, then the child will train. Good luck, it's awesome when it's done!!

I have a set of twins who just turn two yesterday. My sitter and I have been working on potty training with them. I think they are doing very well. She claims (sitter for 24 years) that when you are ready for the potty training they go into underwear/panties and rubber pants. Eventually they will not want that wetness on them. Just wondered if you have tried that for some length of time. I know you said you have purchased Thomas underwear. Just a thought......don't forget every child is different. Hang in there.

Hi J.!
I would say get rid of that pullup! It's allowing him to be having accidents. I have heard SO many experts and parents say that they are nothing but a crutch. I have 4, and I have always had the best success when I just let them go naked until they get it down. I know it's not always ideal, and I do it only at home inside, but it takes away anything that will catch the accidents. I just hope you have a carpet shampooer just in case. Good luck hun, I know it's frustrating!