1- Make sure your child is ready.
Adding to what I wrote last week - make sure you are following the right cues. Push it and you will have to start all over. If they are showing interest - then go ahead and start.
2 - Have the right equipment for YOU and your KID.
Potty Seat vs Potty Chair and Underwear.
3. Decide what is going to work for your Child. Most kids love hugs, kisses and high fives for praise and motivation. But for some they need a little more. Potty Chart and Rewards worked for 2 of the 3 kids in my house. My youngest just wasn't interested in charts. So I skipped them. For my oldest - we used Jelly Beans. For my second I used M&Ms and my third I used Gummi Bears.
Print one of THESE potty charts and take your child to the store. My kids got to pick a special Potty Reward. I bought it then and took it home. Once they filled up the chart they got the toy. If the accidents started to come again, they lost the toy and had to start again with a new chart. The consequence for not going potty is losing the potty reward.
Remember to emphasize the pottying NOT the reward.
Every child got 1 candy reward for EVERY urination and 2 candy rewards for EVERY bowel movement.
Slowly I stopped giving rewards for urine but kept up the bowel rewards until they slowly forgot about them. (the reward)
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| March 2009 - Kid #2 |
Ultimately you need to do what is going to work for you. You need to devote sometime to actually potty train and make sure you have what is going to work for you. For me the potty seat is better because I never have to transition to "big potties" and stores and other places are not scary since they only know how to use the "big ones."
Good Luck and as always I hope this helps! This as always is a post to help give you ideas or help with situations. Not a post telling you WHAT to do...because every kid is different! :)
Thank you so much for these potty training posts! I want to start with Jefrie when things settle down a little more so this will definitly help. (I was actually going to write you for tips) So Thank you!
ReplyDeleteOk, I'm looking for help! I had my daughter pretty well trained at 18 months. she was obsessed with the potty would never poop in her pants and would only pee sometimes at night. Then my son was born and she totally fell off the wagon. I know she can do it, but she will not poop in the potty now and pees her pants when she gets mad! She's almost 3 and I'm totally at a loss of how to make it fun again?
ReplyDeletemy daughter was just about pottied trained and when i had her sister she stopped and i put her back in pul ups and she asked for her big girl panties and i said you have to learn how to potty in the big girl potty befor you can wear them and it works for a day or so then nothing again and somedays she will do bowl movements in potty and not pee vise versa :( what do i do
ReplyDeleteI am at a dead end with my 2 1/2 year old son. He was so interested at first, but now he refuses. He just wants to sit on the "big boy potty" and flush. I have tried rewards, I have tried buying some "big boy" underwear...I have tried a lot, but nothing seems to work. He used to go pee pee in the potty, but then when the new wore off, he doesn't want to. And this seems to be the case for his entire class at daycare, too. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeletemy daughter almost 3 is at that same point anything work yet?
DeleteI would suggest to take a break. There is too much emphasis on the potty, and now your child is uninterested.
DeleteWhen changing a diaper, ask them if they want to try going to the potty. If not, just say okay and move on. If they say yes, take them and then tell them how proud you are for them trying. If they go, bells and whistles! Make it a big deal and see if that new attention helps kick start potty-ing!
where do you get the potty charts?
ReplyDeleteonline. pinterest has TONES
DeleteI heard, for little boys you could put a drop of food coloring in the toilet water and then tell them that when they pee in the toilet it will change the color of the water. try different colors when they get bored of the same one.
ReplyDeleteanother thing, I did, with my little boy was I put a big ocean on his wall in his room. and whenever he went potty he got to put a fish in the ocean. I just made everything with crayons or construction paper. Then I didn't have to give him candy and I could do it forever, I mean we did it for a month! and if he went three days with NO accidents he got to put an octopus or a shark on the wall. and we took fish off for when he had accident. He has had NO troubles since. been a year and half.
ReplyDeleteMy pretty much my daughter trained by a year old, about 6mos later I had her brother and she began regressing alot. Not only in potty training but in speech and other things. I know candy can be a bad thing but my daughter loves MM's so I started to reward her with MM's. After she goes potty/poop I give her some MMs. Infact I keep them in a ziplock right next to the sink so after she washes her hands we get a few MM's. I was also given a tip from a friend that she would throw cherrios in the toilet for her son, if he hit the cherrios when he pottied she would give him a reward of skittles.
ReplyDeleteWe're just starting here! Thanks for the tips! :)
ReplyDeleteI am so stuck with my 4 year old, he refuses to potty train and I have tried everything charts, rewards, books, underware I even let him pick out his own, I have taken him every 15 minutes I have litteral tried everything I know or have heard about and nothing seams to work. I have talked to his Dr and was told that his medicine and his epilepsy is hindering his potty training. I am afraid that he will not be able to go school if he doesn't get potty trained. I was wondering if anyone has any other tips or tings to try. I am at a complete loss at where to go next. Thank you
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine had a daughter who wasn't able to poop on the potty. It turned out that during birth, some nerves in her spine were compressed, so she wasn't able to tell that she had to go. Two visits to the chiropractor and she was 100% fixed. Maybe he just can't feel that need to go?
DeletePotty training "in a day" worked for us (there is a book and lots of posts on pinterest and internet).and no it didn't really happen in a day but by the end of a week we didn't have any accidents! Its crazy. I wish i could tell you which part of it worked but I'm not sure. I do know you have to commit 100 percent and stick to it. The first couple days are not good. We literally threw away my sons pull ups which made us all commit i think :) good luck to you it will happen!
DeleteGeneral thoughts...all don't apply to every situation
ReplyDeleteA. Don't make it a power struggle, it's them holding it in and they will release when ready.
B. Don't make it a scary thing, where mommy gets mad if it doesn't happen or if there is an accident.
C. Accidents happen. Just clean them up, think through the real reason it happened and use clean up time to talk about it and encourage, not break down.
D. Take a short break if it doesn't seem the right time after all.
E. Don't give up just because it's frustrating and there's accidents, children will follow your lead...if you don't take it serious, they won't either...if you make it pressured, they'll give a power struggle...make it a natural thing that they are capable of doing. (they will read: Independence)
What I do is don't rush them I do the change the pull up then I ask do you want to sit on the big potty and if they say no I say ok we will try again later most of my boys want to and when they do they are excited and we have a book we read I forget the author but the name of it is called where's the poop .it is all about animal babies and their mommies and its a lift flap book and it ends with a door at the end which the children all want to knock on and then they open the door and there is a child on the toilet with a newspaper and the caption says excuse me I'm trying to poop they love it and everyone is almost potty trained
ReplyDeleteWasnt really helpful at all....The one thing you can put on your blog is "how do you know your child is ready"?
ReplyDeleteI actually did post about this HERE: http://toddlerboredombusters.blogspot.com/2011/06/scheduling-toddlerstoddler-tips.html#comment-form
Delete:)
My daughter is 6 and is VERY stuborn. If she is mad she will pee in her pants. If she knows it upsets me she will continue to do it, but if I ignore it she stops having accidents.
ReplyDeleteMy son who is 3 regressed after putting him in underware for a couple days. I think he is finally ready to start potty training again. I will have to take it slower this time.
Any tips for nighttime potty training? My son has been daytime potty trained for forever now (it seems like anyway) and just cannot stay dry at night/naps. When he spends the night at my parents house he stays dry without fail. Every single time. We make sure he goes potty before bed but it just doesn't seem to matter.
ReplyDeletei had the same trouble with my son, he was 6 before we had him night trained. I joined the "huggies" website and they had some tips. We cut out all dairy products from his diet after 5pm (and ran out of pull ups too) and we have never looked back. he reverted to wetting the bed and getting up and peeing in various spots around the house (!?) leading up to me going away on holiday, but once i returned it was all back to normal. Go and find some wbsites with tips and tricks, and with time im sure he'll get there:)
Deletealso i forgot to ad...is he old enough to b woken by an alarm at night and get himself up to the toilet? perhaps you could help him with this, and eventually he will wake unaided if he needs to go? my son is a VERY deep sleeper which was half the problem, and even now when he does get up to tske himself to the bathroom he is "sleep walking". you can speak to him and get answers but theres no recollection in the morning haah!
DeleteThank you for making potty training human. We were told yesterday that our son would not be moving to the 3 year old room at daycare with his friends because he's not potty trained so all his friends moved on except him. He just turned 3. My first thought was we failed as parents. He told his dad as they were leaving daycare yesterday "I'm almost ready daddy". Broke my heart. Thank you.
ReplyDeletemy daughter just turned 3 & I think she is just lazy. Some days she wants to potty, most days she would rather be in her diaper. I really want to get her trained but she is so stubborn. It also doesnt help that my 2 year old son wants to be everywhere his sister is. I've tried potty training them both but their both just so stubborn. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteI need help my son is really good at going pee on the toilet but he wont go poop at all.He will do it in his pant and then come to me and let me know he did it ive tried so many things with him. I dont know what to do! Please help?
ReplyDeleteHas anyone tried the potty training watches? They come in a punch of colors. Really cheap. Set it at the time you want and when the alarm goes of it sings a song to your child to remind them to go potty. Ive had to resort to this because my daughter views me telling her as a power struggle..
ReplyDelete