'Early' potty training and nursery

[MeadowHay]

DD is 16m and hates (understatement of the century, it's really stressful for both of us!) having her nappy changed. She has recently started going into a corner to poo too.

I was never wedded to potty training early but I think if we can do it it will make all our lives so much less stressful. I don't think I would try before January as I can't take any time off work before the Xmas period and selfishly I don't want us stuck at home for that time unable to take her anywhere etc. I am currently reading the Oh Crap! book. DD is in nursery 3 days a week and will move rooms in February. Her current room don't have a toilet and when DH asked them very briefly about it awhile ago they recommended we wait until she has moved into the next room. I am thinking we would need to wait for her to settle so we would be looking at March which is still early for toilet training but feels like miles away now! The book is American but mentions nurseries requiring children to wear nappies while potty training, being against not wearing underwear etc. I think her method sounds logical. I could definitely have her off nursery for at least one week but more than that would be difficult and selfishly I do begrudge the huge sum of money wasted keeping her out longer when we are on such a low income.

Just looking for stories from nursery practitioners about how they feel about early potty training and what they usually do about nappies whilst training. And anyone on here if they have had their child toilet trained young whilst they went to nursery?

[GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat]

I’m a childminder.

Both my sons were potty trained before 2 so I’m happy to try if a child is ready.

I don’t put nappies on but they do have to wear pants and trousers (safeguarding and hygiene). Also we are out and about so they need to be reliable enough not to pee in my car for example.

[MeadowHay]

Georgie, how do they become reliable tho? If you have a charge and they are being toilet trained then how would you know if they've got to that stage of being reliable? Presumably all children have a fair amount of accidents to start with? (I dunno so correct me if I'm wrong.) Unless you would expect a child to be with their parents until they are reliable enough but couldn't that take weeks?

[MeadowHay]

Tbf I can actually see that it's probably more difficult for a childminder to accommodate than nursery as presumably you have regular play groups, school pick ups etc to do.

[Boobiliboobiliboo]

Presumably all children have a fair amount of accidents to start with? (I dunno so correct me if I'm wrong.)

If you wait until the child shows clear signs of readiness, there will be very few accidents. My DD was 3 when we did it. She had 1 wet accident on day 1. 3 days later we drove 300 miles to a family christening and she didn’t have any accidents at all.

Friends who have decided when potty training happens (based on age/opinion/pressure from others) have spent months clearing up daily accidents and a few had issues with children becoming frightened by the whole thing.

Much better for everyone if you can wait. Pull ups might suit your LO if they don’t like nappies.

[GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat]

If your child is ready then there won’t be a large amount of accidents no. If there are, then you should probably shelve it and try again in a month or two. Too many accidents and children will just become frustrated.

[MeadowHay]

I don't want to toilet train her out of an ideological stance or anything. I always actually intended to leave her til she was 3ish especially as she's in nursery. However the level of distress it's causing her atm is really bad. We do a mixture of nappies and nappy pants, neither make any difference. She is a bit better sometimes if I do it standing up but I can't do the pooey ones standing as she won't stand still and that just wouldn't work. Doing a poo change is so stressful for both of us and I'm worried that in itself is going to cause issues for her. If I ask her if she's done a poo when I know she has, she says no and shakes her head and gets upset and tries to run away. I'm worried that if we continue as we are its going to affect her bowel habits. But we have tried absolutely everything we can think of and the nappy battles are just getting worse (and less hygienic and more dangerous) the stronger she is getting.

I assumed it would be easier to toilet train an older toddler however I know a few people who had difficulty in children 3+ and then me and my siblings were all day and night dry quickly around the age of 2/2.5. Anecdata is just that isn't it! They're all different I guess.

[thirdfiddle]

Sounds like it's poos she's aware of and bothered by. Why not see if she can do poos in the loo even if you keep the pull-ups for security? DD was pretty reliable on poos (asking for loo and waiting to get there, she needed help with clothes) at that age but wasn't quite sure about pees, though mostly dry we didn't want the risk, particularly in busy environments like nursery (CM in DD's case).

[mozzrules]

It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. Get her a potty and put it in her room and when you think she's going to do a poo sit her on it or explain to her that it is for when she wants to poo. Put some books or toys for her to play with - don't make it pressurised just let her sit there.

If she does a poo in the potty give her lots of praise and she will soon make the connection. If she already takes herself off into a corner to poo then presumably she already understands what she is doing so this part shouldn't take too long.

My DD was completely out of nappies at 16 months but she started with pooing on the potty and then moved on to peeing. She generally pooed at around the same time each day so I just sat her on the potty then.

Obviously when she is sitting on the potty regularly, at some point she will do a wee and then you can show her what she has done and she will make the connection.

When you potty train at a younger age you do need to sit them on the potty regularly, rather than waiting for them to ask. She didn't have accidents at nursery - but it is a problem if there's not a toilet, obviously.

The only issue we had was that the nursery would sometimes put her for an afternoon nap and forget to ask her if she wanted to see first, so then she sometimes would wet herself when she was asleep. Luckily she wasn't disturbed by it. I think if you see it as a gradual process it will help.

[nocutsnobuttsnococonuts]

personally I have no experience of early potty training both my dds were over 3. however i work in a preschool (children age 2 - 4). if the child is ready we go with it and as long as there's plenty of spares we will support the parents choice. however if it goes beyond about 4/5 accidents we will put them in a pull up still taking to the toilet though.

However consider if she is distressed by changing a poo nappy how is she going to cope with a poo accident? much more clean up involved and could take longer than a nappy change.

and has she got the language and understanding to communicate her toilleting needs?

maybe have a meeting with her key worker and discuss potty training, maybe begin with sitting on a potty when she goes off into the corner.

there's some great books to read to dd about potty training, my dds loved Lulu's loo. we had it from around 2 and read frequently.

[GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat]

Yes I would agree- if she’s that distressed with nappy changes, how will she cope with ‘lots of accidents’.

In my experience, lots of children don’t like nappy changes. They don’t like coming away from playing to have a nappy change (in which case they won’t come away to use the toilet).

There’s lots of things that need to come together to successfully potty train. Language skills, muscle control, able to manage pulling clothes up and down, emotional maturity.

[MeadowHay]

Yes, Def has occured to me to try and just toilet train for poo but I'm worried nursery might mess that up because they don't always spot quickly enough when she's done a poo hence her getting frequent nappy rash. So I don't feel I can rely on them to notice when she needs to go and do a poo! And she won't be able to tell them yet. Also not sure how to go about poo toilet training alone, it's not mentioned in the Oh Crap! book or on the NHS website. Definitely will speak to her key person about it all but I think they're just going to try and discourage us doing anything til shes moved into the next room. I don't want to miss this window of opportunity though at least with poo now that she is very motivated because she hard having her nappy changed and she also is starting to understand privacy a bit and clearly knows when she is pooing.

She understands well I think (or at least average? I don't know what is normal at this age!) - she understands things like "we are going to change your nappy now", "can mummy check your bum", "have you done a poo?" im not sure if she understands anything in relation to peeing or even if she knows when she is doing it. But she isn't able to say any words yet in relation to toileting. I think her enunciation is a bit behind, she is saying some words but they don't sound anything like the actual words so nobody understands her well except for me. E.g. she tries to say quack quack when she sees a duck but it comes out like "bargh bargh" or something. Took me a while to figure out what she was saying! I was thinking of trying to use makaton signs for wee and poo etc to help her signal her needs but tbh we've done a few bits of signing for months for words like 'finished' and 'open' and she's never even attempted them lol.

[MeadowHay]

When I compare DD during a nappy change to my friends' children during a nappy change who also apparently "don't like nappy changes" the difference is immense. I feel anxiety just writing about it. Her reaction is.. intense. Like red in the face screaming and rolling around trying to escape/sit up and trying to grab her nappy area and I have to like pin her down and keep flipping her back over and sometimes she gets poo everywhere and cream everywhere and God it's absolutely awful.

[BeanBag7]

I think that level of speech sounds quite normal for a 16 year olds. Most kids are incomprehensible to everyone but their parents until at least the age of 2.

[BeanBag7]

16 month old sorry! Haha!

[thirdfiddle]

DD first started asking for the loo by marching off to the bathroom blowing raspberries. No words required!

I would say first see if she can/wants to use a potty. Then see if she starts to ask for it. By that time she'll probably be in next room at nursery anyway.

[MeadowHay]

Ah I thought toilet training was kind of more a thing you bashed out cold turkey in a few weeks like in the Oh Crap! book, it's my only frame of reference! Do other people tend to do the opposite and do a mixture of potty and nappies for months? Is that not confusing?

[Spanielmadness]

Can’t you just hose her down, standing up, in the bath when she’s done a poo?

[Lazysundays18]

I think if you wait until they're really ready then there should be very few accidents.

[nocutsnobuttsnococonuts]

there is no set rules when it comes to potty training, do what is best for you and your dd. if that's cold turkey or slow mix if pants/pull ups go with it.

in the meantime is there anything you can try to ease the nappy change upset? with children who struggle at the preschool I work in we use a 1 minute sand timer, "when this is finished we will change nappy" or let them bring toy/book. sing songs/say silly rhymes. even had one we had to carry and whoosh like an aeroplane to the nappy room and one who we told the fairies in there wanted to see her. use her interests and find something that works. stickers are a great motivator. or use the timer "I'm going to change your nappy before it runs out".

Or with my dd2 she refused to drink and ended up with frequent urine infections so we had to take action fast (tried every drink she just wasn't bothered) we ended up bribing her with mini marshmallows (she wasnt fussed on stickers) she got one each time she had a drink, a few if she had drunk her whole drink at preschool. now I know bribing isn't for everyone but for us it helped her and was in her best interests, I'd rather she had a little sugar than suffer that pain.

apologies if you've already tried the above. another consideration are the nappies or wipes ok? she isn't reacting to them? with my dds I could only use a certain brand otherwise it hurt them/they ended up with awful rashes. or is it the cold wipes shocking her? could you use warm water and cotton pads?

[itsaboojum]

As with most aspects of raising children, there are numerous different ways to do toilet training. That doesn’t stop smug authors and publishers making a living by convincing anxious parents that theirs is the best or only way.

Worth noting that pull-ups were developed and marketed to be used during training. Although it could be argued that was to keep parents buying product for longer, a lot of people use them successfully without confusing their children.

Amidst all the talk of "early" potty training, it’s interesting to note that, before the manufacturers and supermarkets had disposable nappies to sell, families would generally have toddlers out of nappies at a much earlier stage.

[JustAnotherMammi]

18 & 21 months here. Both just a handful of accidents and were accident-free in a few days. Both were dry overnight shortly after 2.
I think it's actually easier 1.5-2 ish. No nursery here but every nursery I know of carries potty training on, just bringing spares. I'd be shocked if a nursery was against it.

[Babybluesornormal]

Can she manage to take her trousers up and down yet? Honestly I think you need to do the first 3 to 5 days of potty training yourself. The Oh crap method is good but it’s intense and there is no way a nursery would be able to do it with a 1:3 ratio.

[NeedAnExpert]

I’d be concerned by her reaction to nappy changes. If she has nappy rash because nursery aren’t changing her regularly enough you need to sort that. She may be associating changes with pain, all changes. You need to get that under control.

[stucknoue]

It's quite normal to use a pull up out and about and ordinary underwear at home (we used reusable pull ups) no nursery wants to deal with too many accidents, especially if the child is so young, it can take a lot longer

[GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat]

It’s also worth noting there’s a huge difference between being toilet trained and ‘catching’ weed and poos. From some of your comments I suspect you’re thinking of the latter. Relying on staff to notice when she needs to go and then take her otherwise she’ll have an accident, isn’t toilet training. She will bed to be able to communicate her need to go.