Sorry for posting here - is this normal potty training ?

[jtrai]

Sorry to post here, but I'm desperate and can see there are other unanswered posts about this kind of thing in the correct section...

I've just become serious about training my two and a half year old girl. Before this, she's had the odd half a day without a nappy OR when I can see she's having a pee or a poo, I have on occasion taken her nappy off and put her on the potty.

Now I'm trying it properly with no nappy at all. We are on day three of no nappy during the day.

She keeps holding in her pee for a really really long time. Yesterday all day really. She eventually went on the floor and I picked her up mid stream and put her on the potty and gently told her, we do pee pee in the potty. I then praised her for doing so. She cried a bit and didn't want to.

Today she's been holding on to her pee again. She starts crying and touching herself down there and fidgeting. So I remind her to go on the potty or sometimes take her there and she starts crying and refuses.

Earlier it got so bad that she was leaking and holding on to it so much. So I put her on the potty and she was crying again. I was reassuring her. A little bit of pee went in because she could not hold it. I praised her and we went together to empty the potty in the toilet. She likes this part and she loves flushing.

I knew she wasn't finished so I tried sitting her on the toilet and she again was crying. I then put her on the potty again, she cried and didn't want to sit. Then she peed herself while standing up and was crying. I reassured her and put her on the potty again. But by this time she had finished. She cried and told me she was all wet. She clearly didn't like being all wet. I reassured her and dried her and told her she's doing really really well and I'm proud of her.

Is this actually normal ?

It's like she doesn't want to do it at all. I'm afraid a few times when she had her nappy off in the past and wet herself my mum may have scolded her a bit, but I'm not sure if that's actually true.

Also with my DD I got her involved with picking out her big girl knickers to make the whole process exciting rather than stressful

Yes to this 👆

My daughter couldn't wait to wear her dinosaur knickers!

I'm afraid I don't have advice but I want to give solidarity and say my son is doing the same thing. He's just turned 3 and I started trying to potty train him a few weeks ago.

He would hold his wee in all day. Literally from when he woke up until 7pm when he just wouldn't be able to hold it any long and he's get extremely anxious and distressed. This went on for ten days and I just couldn't put him under the stress for any longer and I was so worried he'd get an infection. I got similar advice that he wasn't ready and put a nappy back on.

I read three books so like you I was prepared but unfortunately children don't always follow the rules of a book. Similar to you I've been given the advice give him a chocolate button, give him a sticker, let him choose his pants, try the big toilet rather than the potty. As he's a boy try standing rather than sitting.

Unfortunately this advice won't work for a child that won't wee at all!

Is it?

I made the mistake of thinking dd was ready when she was about 20 months old - she actually used the potty a few times herself but after a few days, started holding wees in till her stomach was bloated and uncomfortable. When I asked her if she needed a wee, she just said she wanted a nappy on, then she would do a huge wee within seconds once I put one on.

We tried again when she started being consistently dry through the night for longer then a month. Dd was potty trained within 5 days and has only had one accident since. She was coming up to 2.6 years and just got it.

We used one of those toddler toilets (basically a mini portable toilet, it had a flusher on it and a toilet roll holder - you can remove the seat to fix onto ‘adult’ toilets when you are out and about too)
My dd didn’t like her potty but the mini toilet was a winner!

Agree that perhaps the reason children seemed to be trained earlier ‘back in the day’ was more to do with parents wanting them out of the cloth nappies. I know that was my mums motivation anyway. She said she always tried to get us potty trained over the summer, using a laid back approach, bare bums, towels down on the carpets (lots of accidents) but we ‘all got there in the end’

I don’t think 2.5 is too early op & it’s not late either. There really is no magic number. Potty training shouldn’t be stressful for the child imo and I personally don’t think it should take ages to train either. If a child is taking a long time to get it or is having accidents for ages afterwards, they were probably not ready.

Following for the comments! about to try again with Milky Way chocolate stars after two failed attempts at 2y 4 months and 2y 6 months...

DD is now 2y 10 months.. Health visitor advised don't even bother til nearly 3.