to think we should give up potty training for now

[MelvinThePenguin]

Our DD1 is 25 months. She is very switched on, talks in full sentences and is ahead of where she should be developmentally. However, she just cannot seem to grasp potty training.

In 4 full days of taking her to the toilet every 30 minutes, putting her in knickers and introducing a sticker chart, we have had a 0% success rate in actually using the toilet. She just wets herself and then comes and tells me there's water on the floor/her trousers are wet.

She's fine with the process of using the toilet (pants down, climb on, wipe, pants up, wash hands) she just misses the important bit. She has been shown multiple times what to do.

She is an exhausting child with boundless energy and the capacity for terrible tantrums. I'm just not sure I can take this as well.

On the flip side, I really want her out of nappies (my 9 week old in nappies is enough) and don't want her to be in them when her peers are potty trained.

That should say 2 years and 7 months OP. Not 7 years!

Thanks FlorisApple, that's made me see it from a very different angle.

I am probably unusually on edge about this, because I spent a year in bed with severe bladder pain when I was 24. I have a chronic condition (interstitial cystitis) and nobody agrees on the cause. I thought getting all the hygiene stuff sorted could help reduce infection risk, which is one potential cause. However, holding it in could be more of an issue.

Tried my DD at 2years old, and again 6 months later. We did the whole shebang - potty, stickers, choosing pants etc. Nothing worked. At 2 years 8 months she announced she was going to the toilet, and that was that. She basically toilet trained herself. When they're ready they're ready.

DS has a friend a couple of months younger than him who started 'potty training' at 2.5 (being taken to the toilet every half hour whether he showed signs of needing to go or not as he never asked when he needed to go). It took months til he was reliably dry and going to the toilet of his own accord. We waited til DS was 3.2 and he was properly trained in a few days. Much less stress and the same end result!

All children are different OP..... i have 2 daughters my eldest was using the potty and fully toilet trained by 17 months, my younger daughter was completely different, wouldn't even sit on a potty and i only managed to get her toilet trained when she was over 3 and it took me a good few months to get her used to it..... it is hard work but they will tell you when they are ready once you start, i started with the youngest when she was 18months and she just wasn't interested so i tried again at 30months and still nothing then i started just putting her on the toilet just before her 3rd bithday and she didnt oppose it so i carried on.... worth all the hard work in the end 😁

One of the advantages of a potty is that you can have it in the room you are in so not so far to go when she feels the need. Taking her to the toilet every half hour is pointless, she has to be aware of needing to go herself. 25 months seems pretty young, 2.6 seems more average, are you sure all the other kids the same age are already out of nappies?

She doesn't sound like she's showing any of the signs she's actually ready, ie knows when she needs to go.
DD was interested in the toilet from 2 ish but didn't train until 2 months shy of her 3rd birthday. She then cracked it in 4 days.
On the flip side Friend decided her son should be trained as soon as he turned 2 & was an epic battle. He still refuses to go sometimes & still had accidents at 5.
It'll never work if she's not ready

I'm more persuaded by arguments for the toilet tbh, particularly as DD likes to do everything that I do. In our house, the nearest would only ever be a few more paces from the potty anyway. However, if a second attempt in a few months doesn't work, I'll definitely consider it.

Yes, I know all her nursery peers are out if nappies. I've talked to the nursery staff about it. That's how I know she oversees the trips to the loo and is where I got the suggestion to take her every 30 minutes from. That's what they do with all their potty training kids, so I wanted to be consistent.

Interesting reading this thread as both mine were potty trained abroad - the rule at nursery was that all children must be dry by 2 years latest! I was skeptical but somehow they all managed it.

I think that once your DD can recognise that she's urinating or using her bowels, then she'll be ready to go for training. I'd suggest just talking to her more about the bodily functions while they're happening or just after. Then see if you can get her to start anticipating it before it happens.

She knows when she's using her bowels and will often (though not always, and not since I tried potty training) come and tell me in advance that she needs to. That was one of the reasons I thought she might be ready. The others were asking to wear knickers and asking to sit on the toilet.

I think I'm going to heed the advice of using bowels as a starting point, but we're going to back off completely for now. Knowing her, if she has any interest at all she'll get cross about not using her pink toilet seat and pepper pig pants anymore!

I'm a nanny, I've toilet 'trained' 33 children, when I first started I did the week at home, sticker chart, changed a million pairs of pants.

Now I don't stress! I wait until the child is ready. I advise my employers to get two potties at an early age, 7/8 months and have one in the play area/downstairs loo and one in the bathroom and sit them on it with or without nappy through out the day, huge praise if they go, nothing if they don't. It just normalises sitting on it.

When they regularly wee/poo on the potty we go shopping for pants, let them choose which ever they like and then spend Monday at home in pants, if they don't have more than a couple of accidents we carry on, more than three and we go back to nappies and try again 4 weeks later. None have them have taken more than 3 months. I've had children in pants as early as 21 months and as late as 3.5 years, none of my sets of twins (have had 4) have been dry at the same age!!

It's a skill that they will learn when they are ready. We don't do sticker charts or bribery to make them walk or talk or learn how to count, write read! We just try to encourage them and know that they will get there when they are good and ready!