What rewards so you use?

[Dizzylin]

We started potty training our DS who is 3 back in September. At home he does ok with weeing but tends to hold his poos for when he has his nappy on at night or hides and does it in his pants.

Three weeks ago he had 5 accidents in 2 days (he only goes 2 days a week). Nursery told DH we should start punishing him when he had an accident but I disagreed and told DS that he would get a treat at the end of the week if he hadn't had any accidents. For 2 weeks we had no accidents and he got a treat but this week he has had 4 accidents in the two days.

Obviously he gets more attention at home than he does at Nursery and I think he gets playing with his friends and therefore doesn't go to the loo.

I'm thinking we need a more instant reward system with a big reward at the end but he's not interested in a sticker chart - what do you use?

[Whitechocandraspberry]

No need for rewards. Keep it light hearted. No annoyance or anger. All positive.

[Bol87]

I agree. We have recently trained our 23 month old (she’s very on the ball) and used no rewards. Only heaps & heaps of praise. Like so OTT you’d think we were insane! We do wee wee dances and her ‘reward’ was to go flush the wee/poo & press the button to make it flush. She loves it

I have had friends use one single M&M per use of the potty however it’s caused issues when they wanted to stop doing it. And at nursery where they wouldn’t do that..

I’ve seen stickers used, that seemed to work if you have a kid who loves stickers?! Or maybe you could do a bigger reward when they’ve had a good few days/week? A new animal figure or teddy or car etc?

[thenewaveragebear1983]

I attempted with my ds to do without rewards, but it was disastrous. So (because he was over 3 and starting nursery and I was getting desperate) we got a big jar of chocolate buttons, called them potty buttons and low, within about 2 days he was completely dry, even at nursery. At the beginning they ask every time but gradually if you switch to only getting a button if they remember, they gradually wean off them anyway. Once he got good at the actual functional training, we switched to it being a button for going by yourself, or a button for being dry at nursery (after the inevitable 3 weeks in, forgetting to go once the novelty wears off!)

Some children just respond very well to tangible rewards and Ds had literally zero interest in being out of nappies, so could probably see no benefit whatsoever to having to do extra work to go to the toilet. He was all about the buttons.