To wonder how pull-ups work as part of potty training?

[ChevalierTialys]

My DS (age 3) started potty training this week, I've been putting him in them for naps and at night. He treats them like nappies. And no amount of telling him "they are pants and we pull tgem down to wee in the potty" will make them look and feel any less like nappies.

How is this supposed to work? Am I completely missing the point?

They are a marketing ploy. I used them for my son when I couldn't get a nappy on him as he hated being changed! When we potty trained him he was naked from the waist down, then commando, then pants and trousers. We took a week off work to do it. Kids wont understand the difference between a pull up and a nappy as they are really the same. They need to feel wet when they have done a wee.

I think they are more for parents, but the health visitors I used to work with recommended putting pants on underneath them if you wanted to use them to reduce mess e.g. if out and about, so they still felt different to child and they could tell if they had wet.

The problem with putting them over pants though is that if the child won’t tell you they’ve wet you don’t know and they can get a bad rash from having wet pants next to their skin for a long time rather than having the wet absorbed by a nappy or having clearly wet clothing that can be changed. This happened to my friends son and he was absolutely red raw.
Kids can also just get used to being damp this way and it doesn’t bother them.
No reason for pull ups to exist at all imo.