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Monday, January 14, 2008

It's Potty Time!

Okay, fellow moms. I need some advice.

We're getting serious about potty training at our house.

I was never in a rush to potty train Ann Catherine. I've heard if you push them before they are ready, they'll regress. Plus, when Ann Catherine turned two, Lily was still a baby and it was hard to even think about potty training.

But, I can tell she's ready now. The problem isn't learning to potty. She can do that. Her problem is, she won't tell us when she needs to.

So, I need to know what worked for you. Different friends have told me different things. Some let their children wear big girl underwear and after a few days of wetting their new undies, they were potty-trained. My best friend let her kids run around without clothes for the weekend and they learned because they hated the feel of the pee on their legs.

What worked for you? I would love to know, because we are buckling down at our house. I know all kids are different, but I do welcome the advice. Hopefully, we can find what works for us!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Each child is different and each parent is different. I also listened to a lot of advice and most of what I heard involved a lot of peeing in places I didn't know if I could handle(the carpet, the couch, the bed, the car, etc.) What worked with my children was to initially be at home and concentrate with them for a few days. Talk a lot about it. Tell her that you don't know when she has to go, so she'll have to be a big girl and tell you. My daughter would go just a little in her panties and then she would stop and say I have to go. Even though she had wet a little, she was learning to listen to her body and control the muscles and communicate to me all at the same time. It only took a couple of days. You have to ask them about a hundred times a day at first and then when they go even a little just start pouring on the praise. We would sing, we would dance. We would talk about the pretty Hello Kitty Panties we were going to buy when we were completely trained. It felt like such a huge obstacle, but it hindsight it was only a couple of days. Yes, it can be messy, but when it's done, it's such an accomplishment for both the parents and the child.

Anonymous said...

For us we would put the potty chair in the living room...because we played more in there than we did anywhere else. We sat the potty chair on a towel just in case they accidently wet the floor..this took about a week...i was a stayed at home mom so we didn't have to leave if we did not want to..also when we would go places we would put on the thick curity underwear and rubber pants. The pull ups did not work for us because they thought they still had on diapers..Good Luck

Anonymous said...

We potty-trained our son when he was three months from his third birthday. Sure, we had talked about it and tried before that, but he just wasn't interested. I consulted the farmer's almanac and got the perfect date for the task. It just so happened that it was on a Sunday.

We got up that morning and put on big boy underwear, and immediately had an accident. He had a few more accidents that day, but went to the potty some too. The next day, I had to go to work so the job fell to my mother (who by the way wanted to do this on his 2nd birthday). Monday was a total loss...accidents all day. Tuesday was great. He went pee-pee in the potty EVERY single time, but he had a potty accident that evening. By Wednesday morning, he called me at school and announced that he had gone pee-pee and potty in the potty. He never had another accident after that.

As motivation, I made a sticker chart for him and got some Thomas the Train stickers. Every time he used the potty, he got to put a sticker on his chart. He was so proud. Every time someone would come to the house, he would show off his new stickers. We also promised the grand prize...Cranky the Crane.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Amy,
My little girl is very stubborn and wants to do things when she wants to do them. The thing that worked for me ( spanking didn't work) is I took her favorite toys away and made her think i was giving them to someone else. She learned very quickly that I was serious about the matter.

Amy said...

Thanks so much to all of you! You have given me some great ideas. I like the idea of the sticker chart where they can watch their progress. And one of you suggested that pullups are too much like diapers. I agree, and that's why we may go ahead and make the jump to big girl underwear and just have accidents until she is trained.

Anonymous said...

We are in the process of potty training our two girls. They were 2 in October. And we have a treasure chest(just little toys and candy) in the bathroom and every time they go the get to pick something out of it..

You can get cheap little toys in bag fulls for $1.00 and mix them in with some candy and they can't wait to have another turn to pick something out..

Anonymous said...

I agree, I don't think pull-ups work very well, I was lucky, my son went from diapers to pull-ups for a week and then to big boy undies, he was 5 months shy of turning 3, and we didn't have to do anything, he just wanted to go, I think he watched the kids at his daycare, because we put him in pull-ups and after one week in those, his teacher said, he was ready for big boy undies, he had no accidents, and he has been potty trained ever since. My advice is not to push it, my little boy just started when he was ready, and now my 2 yr old daughter is already going potty, and I think it's because she watches her brother go, and she actually tells me "peepee" and she still wears diapers, but she goes potty probaby 5 times a day, which I think is great at her age. I think the key is not to push it, I think when they are ready, then their ready!!! Good luck to you! My kids are 1 yr apart exact, I have a 2 and a 3 year old, and I"m finally seeing a end to diapers, which I thought would never happen! :-)

Anonymous said...

It's been quite a few years from the time I potty trained my daughter, I started at age two, and the potty chair was in the bathroom where it's suspose to be, the key to my training was to take her every hour or so wheather I needed to go or not, and sit and just take a few minutes to see if she needed to go, I would have a magazine and she would have a little golden book to read, and it took no time at all, prior to starting the potty training we went shopping for big girl panties, and she was able to pick her favorite colors her self and that made a big difference, within days she was off and running and only had one or two accidents at night. Good Luck!!