Hi D.,
We only have one child experience with potty training and it is with a boy. So unfortunately I don't know the difference between training boys and girls. I can just tell you what did and did not work for us. He would sit on his potty and a toilet insert since about age 2. And sit is all he would do. He loved to watch his potty training videos (one Elmo, another was a little girl helping her little brother) and read his potty books. Still nothing. We tried stickers on a pad of paper, stickers and tattoos on his hand (was told to find his "currency" for a reward) with no results. My husband came across this book at the library called, "The Idiot's Guide to Potty Training" (yes, seriously) which talked about a potty training weekend where you do nothing but concentrate on the task at hand. No leaving the house and expect lots of messes. First weekend....nothing but a lot of messes. Than we found a website called www.tootntinkle.com. Kaden loved to watched the video and "paint" the pictures on the website. They use a stamp chart and a special sticker for training. Great idea, but most of the items were out of stock. So, we created our own sticker chart where he got to choose the sticker and put it on (a whiteboard poster that sticks onto your wall), re-did the potty weekend on a 3-day weekend and incorporated a timer so he would know when it was time to sit the potty and try. For an extra incentive he could "spend" the stickers for activities such as a video, finger painting, play-doh, tattoos, candy, etc.. It seemed hopeless again until Sunday night (2-full days into the training) he finally went pee in the potty instead of saying "I have to go potty" while he was already peeing in his pants. By Monday he was a pro and we even went grocery shopping and he peed in the potty at the store!
Now pooping was another story. He kept doing that in his pants for what seemed like weeks until he finally got it right on the potty. We also started putting FiberSure in his milk to help that process along since he would hold it for days and than it would be painful. I think he didn't even want to try and sit for poo (would jump right off the toilet and wouldn't even consider sitting there for at least 2 minutes to help his body relax) because he equated it with pain. He would even run to the bathroom saying "I have to go potty", would get on and than would just jump right off. Talk about aggravating!! We haven't had any problems with it after we started the FiberSure.
Ok, I know this is a long entry but our trials of potty training was anything but easy. I hope you can take some of what we did to make it easier for your boy!
M.