How do I go about this? Clueless!

[QueenSconetta]

Hi All

DD is nearly 19 months, and appears to be ready to start potty training - pulls at her nappy when wet and if you ask if she wants to be changed she nods and runs off to the changing area, often dry at night, touches her front bottom if she needs a wee, goes off into a corner when she is pooing etc.

How on earth do I go about this? Where do I start? We have potties and have had some inconsistent success with weeing in them. The other day tried asking if she wanted to go to the toilet when she headed to 'the corner', she said yes, sits there for a while, does nothing, gets nappy back on and immediately poos in it (although have only tried this once!)

Any advice appreciated, x.

[RuthChan]

It's great that your DD is showing signs of being ready to potty train.
19 months is pretty young!

There are many different ways of going about this, but when I trained DS over the Easter holiday I did it by simply leaving him without a nappy.
We stayed at home for about 4 days and during that time he was nappy-less and free to go to the potty whenever he felt like it.

Doing this allows the child to see their own pee and poo and learn about their body. They begin to associate more closely the feeling of needing to pee or poo with actually going to the potty.

There is likely to be a puddle or two, but that's the advantage of doing this in the summer. You can let her run around in the garden, if you have one, and it's warm enough for her to be left with nothing on from the waist down.

You'll need to ask her every 15 minutes or so if she needs to go to the potty in the beginning. Keep reminding her so that she is more likely to actually go to the potty than have an accident. It gets a good routine going and allows you lots of scope for praise and encouragement.

After a few days you'll find that she gets much more reliable. You can then think about putting her in pants and shorts etc. This will probably make her more likely to have accidents in the beginning. She will possibly confuse the feeling of wearing clothes with that of wearing a nappy. It will also take time to remove the clothes to go to the potty, which also leads to accidents if she's too late. However, she'll get the hang of that also after a couple of days.

These are just the ways that I approached it, but I'm sure a lot of other people will have different advice.

With my DD I simply waited until she told me she was ready to wear pants. She did one wee and one poo in them. (Almost as though she was checking what would happen.) and that was it. She was trained.
She was 2.5 though, a little older than your DD.

HTH.

[familyfun]

hi QS, my dd1 showed early signs of wanting potty training so at 18 months i let her sit on potty every night while i ran the bath as id noticed she normally weed andpood as bath ran. she did every poo in potty from then on so if you know when your dd poos sit her on potty then.
then i put her in pull ups where the picture fades when they wee and told he to keep it dry so she kept the princess picture whih she loved. i then offered the potty every 15 mins and eventually she would go to potty and wee ad keep pull ups dry.
i took potty everywhere.
at 20 months i had a potty training week, potty in room with us, dd bare from waist down and i didnt offer potty, just let her go when she needed to, she had a couple of puddles and then realised she needed to get there. after 2 days i put pants on her which she sat on potty and weed thrugh then realised she needed to pull them down. 2 days later we did jogging bottoms she could pull down. after a week she was in pants and rarely had an accident from then on.
reliably trained by 21 months
its worth a try as if you miss this opportunity she might stop telling you when she needs to go.

[QueenSconetta]

That's great, thanks for your help. I am going to try and put her on the potty at least every morning and evening. This morning she said she didn't want a nappy on when she woke up so we had a couple of hours nappy-less and had some wees in the potty and some on the floor but not too much trauma.

Looks like a week off work in the near future is in order!!