posted
What kind of seat do you recommend? I never knew there were so many! I don't know whether to go with one that is fun and plays music etc. because it may also be distracting or one that's just plain and functional but that might be boring and not interest her. Leslie is 18 months old. I really didn't even plan to try until she was 2 but now she's telling me "diaper" sometimes when she's dirty and she's fascinated with coming in the bathroom with me. Yesterday she even wanted to wipe herself when I changed her so I think it's time to try. I just would appreciate some opinions on good seats so I get it right the 1st time! Thanks!
Posts: 601 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I have the same question. My son is 21 months. His words are still unintelligible. He can say bubbles, dada, mom, and a few other simple words. He can't say diaper, but he has been throwing away his dirty diaper since he could walk.
I have no idea how to start potty training. I guess he is ready.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
lem, your son may or may not be ready - many people believe that boys tend to do potty-learning later than girls. Boy Opera wasn't trained till he was closer to 3, but once he was we had a dry bed every single night, vs. Operaetta who trained at about 22 months but had to wear pull-ups for quite awhile afterwards.
I have no suggestions for potty chairs - my kiddos used the plain ones and seemed to do fine. To be real honest, I used the same technique you would with a puppy - offer them the opportunity to go about every 30 minutes, and especially after eating/drinking. Then do a big "yay!!" when they go.
posted
I found that my boy doesn't even like the little potties. He has only gone pee pee in the big potty with a potty seat. He started pee pee-ing before taking a bath since he was 20 months old. He's 35 months old now and still can pee pee in the potty but isn't completely trained yet. He has gone without wetting his pants for 6 hours before though.
Posts: 1417 | Registered: Aug 1999
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dawnmaria, pick up a little book called 'Toilet Training in Less Than A Day'. It has everything you could ever want to know about toilet training, from what you should do to what kind of seat to get, to where you should put it and how it should be used.
I found with my daughter that it was most effective to just get her a step stool and teach her how to get on the big potty by herself. She had a potty chair, but lost interest once she was able to get on the toilet herself.
But I can't recommend that book enough. It got me toilet training my son when I thought it would never happen. It took a very long weekend to get him trained, but he really was trained at the end of it. My daughter took a lot less time.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I tried to do some potty training last week. I think we need to take a break before trying again. I heard somewhere once that kids can't potty train while they are going through a language learning phase, which I think she definitely is, but maybe that's bunk. Has anyone else heard something like that before? I can't even remember where I heard/read it.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I never used a seat with any of my four children, I trained them right on the potty itself. I figured why spend the money and hassle teaching them about using one thing then try to switch to another.
It worked fine, we never had any problems with anyone falling in or anything. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I'm going to do what my mom did and not even attempt toilet training until my kid shows the following signs of readiness:
-Understands what the toilet is for and shows an interest (check) -Dry all night (only sometimes) -Can pull pants up and down on her own (trying, but not there yet) -Can wash hands competently (loves to wash, but can't quite do it alone yet) -Shows awareness of need to go (often but not always)
We're thinking sometime this summer she'll be ready. Then I'll use my mom's method, which worked for all of us: show the child to the toilet (we were all big enough to not need a child seat, only a stool, but we're considering a seat for Ems), show her what to do, then watch and remind her to go when she needs to or might need to. We were all done within a week. When we wet the bed (I actually remember this), Mom asked, "Did you know you needed to go?" "Yes." "Why didn't you use the potty?" "I don't know." "Okay, if you're big enough to use the potty, you're big enough to change your sheets when you have an accident." Whereupon she helped us strip our sheets and put them in the washer, got down fresh sheets, and helped us put them on. (We all had plastic mattress covers, of course.) None of us ever wet more than once (except my brother, but he was another story; he had muscle tone and coordination problems and wore Pull-ups until his nighttime bladder control was better.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
We had a potty seat, but it was a white plastic one that looked just like a miniature toilet. So transitioning to the full sized potty wasn't as big a deal. (I don't remember this for myself, but I remember my younger siblings using it.) Also we used the bowl from it when we were older and had to collect urine samples to take to the doctor (that I remember).
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Space Opera: I have no suggestions for potty chairs - my kiddos used the plain ones and seemed to do fine. To be real honest, I used the same technique you would with a puppy - offer them the opportunity to go about every 30 minutes, and especially after eating/drinking. Then do a big "yay!!" when they go.
space opera
My parents claim that I was trained at 8 mos by this method.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
We used a simple potty chair. I think it was from Fisher Price. It was very practical, as it could be used as a stand-alone potty chair, and you could also put the seat part on the toilet and use the bottom as a step stool so the child could get up to the toilet. We didn't have any trouble transitioning from the potty to the toilet.
A book I loved about toilet training was called Toilet Learning by Alison Mack. It was very sensitive to the needs and developmental abilities of the child being taught to use the toilet, which is why I liked it.
Posts: 5771 | Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Ela, was it blue and white (your kids are about the same age as me so it's possible they'd be the same) because mine was and it's Fisher Price, we then used the bowl part as a step stool.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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My sister was potty trained when mom said "If you go to the potty when you need to go instead of using a diaper I'll buy you that pencil set you want." That was all it took. She just did it. The pencil set she probably still has. I bet she was at least three, though.
I recently heard of a three year old boy who would not, I mean flat out refused, to use the potty. He was finally converted when it was explained to him that an important part of every ninja's training is learning to go to the potty by themselves, and wash their hands properly afterward, and that ninjas aren't allowed to wear diapers on their ninja missions. So he did sword-fighting, stealth, strength, agility, and potty training sessions with his ninja master. It worked like a charm. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Tatiana, I was a hold-out. (It did not help that just as I was turning three and about ready for potty training, my baby brother was born.) My mom finally said, "We'll get you any kind of panties you want if you'll use the potty. What kind do you want?" I wanted yellow, my favorite color at the time. They didn't make yellow panties in my size. So my mom got white, and dyed them yellow, and I was quite happy to wear them and use the potty. We then proceeded as outlined before.
Bribery works wonders. Emma wouldn't get dressed the other day, so I said, "I'll give you a high five if you get your shirt on!" She stopped screaming and put the shirt on. We proceeded to dress her, high-fiving after every article of clothing. Yay for bribery-- I mean, positive reinforcement and incentives! Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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My son wouldn't be potty trained for anything. Eventually, the method in the book I recommended above worked. Essentially, you train the child, just as you would train doing anything else, breaking the mechanics down, teaching them through the use of a doll. You teach the doll (including an 'accident'), then you have the child teach the doll, then you have the child try it himself. Rewards and encouragement all along the way. And once you start the training, they never go back into diapers. When they have an accident, they must clean themselves up (with rewards all through the process, but not doing any of it yourself except when they get stuck, then you just help only as much as necessary).
Part of 'readiness' testing is assessing whether the child willingly follows directions as given. If not, they have suggestions for getting to that readiness, all of which worked very well for me. For toilet training and other issues.
The main exception I made was that I still put a pull up on him at night.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I have never admitted this outside of the family. So this is serious confession time.
We had trouble potty training Daniel. We could get him to urinate in the potty, but the other - wasn't happening. I tried everything, every method. I had convinced myself that it was because of his hypotonia, perhaps he didn't have the right muscular control or feel of his bowels or something. The doctor said no, but I had to grasp at something.
Finally my aunt asked him one day when he was going to start wearing big boy pants and all that jazz. He replied he would when that terrible stuff stopped coming out of his bottom. While that was still happening, he didn't like to wear clothes that would get messed up.
So finally, I sat down and had a talk with him and discovered the problem. With all our talk of becoming a "big boy" he had somehow worked it out in his head that when he became a big boy, he would stop doing that - that poo would just go away, and then he'd know he was big. So why worry about controlling it when it was going to disappear?
I realized that we had neglected an important part of potty training. Daddy had shown him what to do and such, but only with one form of elimination. He didn't understand that grownups still had to move their bowels too.
Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, he was trained within days.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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kmbboots, actually many parents I know use a technique called elimination communication. Many start it almost at birth. It's basically knowing when your child is going to go and getting them to the potty. I read something once too about mamas in tribal cultures who sling their children constantly and basically do the same thing - they're so in tune with their babies that they sense the babe needs to go, whip them out of the sling, and let them go the bathroom. Pretty cool!
My M-I-L told me that her youngest son (my husband is No. 3 of 4 boys) had a problem with BMs. He just wouldn't do them, then he would get constipated and couldn't. She bribed him by paying him a nickel for every time he had a BM.
posted
Getting a daycare to help out and try to get them to use the potty is a great help, though sadly a lot of them don't want to deal with the potential messes and have kids in diapers when they are there, until they are done potty training.
That's part of why my nephew had to be convinced potty training was worth it(which he only accepted as being worth it because ninjas had to be potty trained), because his daycare made it seem like he could stay in diapers as long as he wanted.
Posts: 376 | Registered: Sep 2004
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TomD, there's a reason it's called Toilet Training in Less than a Day. If you do it on Saturday, that gives the child an entire extra day to make mistakes at home before going back to daycare. Or it could be done on a three day weekend.
Granted, I guess there are daycares out there who don't want to bother with the occasional mess (which is all you'd have with this method, at the worst), but in all blunt honesty, I don't think I would ever put my child into one of those types, largely because it tells me that the daycare's priorities are screwed up. Kids in full time daycare aren't just there for a little while. They're there a long time, and the daycare has to have an active role in parenting (training a child at any rate), and that includes supporting potty training. That doesn't mean they have to do it *exactly* like you do. If your daycare can only allow 5 minutes to the cleanup of accidents, they can have Sophie participate in the cleanup while the adult keeps it efficient and less time consuming.
The point is to let the child own responsibility for their pottying. While in diapers, you're responsible. Going through the training, you're effectively handing over that responsibility to the child.
OTOH, ninja potty training sounds very effective too. Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Space Opera: kmbboots, actually many parents I know use a technique called elimination communication. Many start it almost at birth. It's basically knowing when your child is going to go and getting them to the potty. I read something once too about mamas in tribal cultures who sling their children constantly and basically do the same thing - they're so in tune with their babies that they sense the babe needs to go, whip them out of the sling, and let them go the bathroom. Pretty cool!
space opera
Yup. That was (I gather) pretty much the plan. Not the carrying me around in a sling, though. It seems that I was remarkable "regular" thus predictable.
The cleaning up themselves method can be tricky. My two-year-old nephew learned to change his clothes instead of learning to use the potty. Surprises for mom! "Why are you wearing your sweatpants?" "I pooped." Greaaat.
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