I keep putting off potty training - help!

[ChiccaD]

Dear clever MNs. Please tell me how you went about potty training your children.

I keep putting it off and at this rate we will be in primary school before we are out of nappies.

@MoobyMoo
But you can also reward a pee on the potty with a chocolate button and ALSO teach children intrinsic motivation.

By definition, you can’t.

When you bribe a child to do something, you’re using external motivation. You’re not teaching them to use the potty because this is just what we do now, you’re saying “do this for me and I’ll give you a treat”.

Then of course, seperate to bribery but intertwined in this example, is that using food as rewards or punishments sets off an unhealthy attitude toward food, and it is part of the reason we have such an obesity crisis.

There is nothing wrong with chocolate, or sweets, or biscuits etc. All food in moderation.

There is something wrong in both bribery, and also using food as a treat, whether that food be chocolate or carrot.

No you may not want validation from other Mothers but kindly do us all a favour and don’t jump in and criticise how other people have potty trained. I would get your “fake gaspy” concern if I was hitting my child but I am rewarding them for doing something well, learning a new skill and giving them something the rarely get. You utterly lost me when you said “I will judge you” How dare you. Seriously. I said it before and I will say it again, who the hell do you think you are? Your kids may not get chocolate buttons, you must be the bestist mummy in the whole world. Slow clap for you. But you’re also horrible, rude, condescending and arrogant. Good luck not passing that on to your kids because you’re happy to dish it out to total strangers on the internet from behind a keyboard. It says a lot about your character.

Completely agree @Thunderpants88

I actually feel sorry for @MoobyMoo's kids for having such a condescending, judgemental, rude, 11-erife of a mother.

You seem to be missing my point entirely 🤔

My kids do have chocolate. We just don’t use it as a reward or a punishment; it’s a food like any other.

They shouldn’t need rewarding for using the potty. Just like they don’t need rewarding for talking or walking or doing chores.

These are things we do because they’re good for us, they help us and our family, and it’s good for children to understand their role in the home and to be part of a team helping each other out. They have a purpose. That’s the importance of intrinsic motivation.

There’s also so much value in verbal praise that is missed when we jump to material rewards.

It does seem like a mountain to climb when you haven't done it before. My mum's advice was to stock up on dettol which I did. I just put dd1 in knickers and kept a potty in the downstairs loo and a kids toilet seat on the toilet in the main bathroom. I took her every 20 minutes and gave loads of praise if she manged anything. We tried for 2 weeks and she just wasn't getting it aged 2.5. So I waited another 6 months, talked about it, watched a peppa pig episode on it, watched YouTube videos on cococomelon about toilet training and tried again at 3. She cracked it in 3 days and started asking to go to the toilet herself . In a week she was dry during the day and overnight. I layered her bed so a pad on her mattress protector, bought dettol and plenty of knickers and stickers. I did take a week off at a time but started around a bank holiday so I didn't need to take as may days off. Dh and I followed the same approach and were consistent.

Best of luck.

@MoobyMoo here you go, now you can bask in the glory of being so much better than the rest of us.