Bloody bloody potty-training... 2.7 yo DD3

[duchesse]

Been at it since mid February, and still getting 10-12 wet pants a day. She seems to need to pee every 20 mn, wants to use the potty/loo, can stop herself peeing, can hold on for a few seconds, if put in a nappy will take herself to the potty and insist on being undressed to pee on the potty. Just starts weeing in her pants every.single.damn.time.

It's like deja vu all over again. On past performance based on her siblings I've got another 4 years of this.

I would LOVE for those people so willing to tell everybody that people who hadn't potty trained their children by 2.5 yo were nothing short of abusive to come and share their fount of wisdom about where we're going wrong.

Nursery (daycare, not session nursery, so fully set up for babies in nappies) now want to discuss how to proceed wrt to potty-training. I'm thinking, just wait till she's 6, she'll probably be dry then.

Seriously though, help, please. Please don't suggest start charts or any crap like that, been there, done it, got the shirt. We are doing everything by the flipping book. And looking at doing a LOT of washing for the next few years. Also I really don't need anybody telling me I'm a slack/abusive/crap parent because my child is nowhere near dry at 2y 7 m. We have tried everything over 4 children and the result has always been the same: dry reliably at about 6 yo.

I am no expert and have only trained one DD, but if you are not having any success I would just stop for now, take the pressure off. Then try again in 4 months or so. Otherwise you are just banging your head against a brick wall. Otherwise you will end up (more) frustrated and so will she.

Just tell daycare you have tried for two months with no success so you both need a break from it.

Also why not use pull ups when you next try so there is less washing/accidents.

I am sure you have heard it all but what worked for my DD at 2.10 months was chocolate; two smarties for a wee, four for a poo.

Also encourage your DD to learn to pull her own trousers/pants up and down or dress her in something simple like leggings. I found doing it in the summer was great so DD was wearing a simple skirt with pants under.

Good luck :)

doitnicely, thank you.

Yep, done the chocolate! She gets a malteser for every wee/poo in teh potty, regardless of the pant situation.

She's also pretty adept at getting dressed (although a lot of things end up going back to front) and undressed- can easily get leggings and tights and most trousers down in time.

In most areas of her life, she is like her siblings, ahead of the curve. Just very very much not this one.

I would love to stop- after the 6th accident of the day, or when I've spent 2 hours mopping up accidents and getting her clean clothes, I sometimes cave and put her back in a nappy. And she will take her nappy off to go on the potty (not usually a dry nappy by then, so she's still having the same wee issues). She did it last week- took her nappy off to do a poo while I was outside and potty inside, having slightly got there too late, managed to drop the turd on the carpet, dropped the nappy upside down on the carpet, sat on the potty, did her thing, got off, wiped her bottom with a wipe, then came out to tell me that she'd been on the potty. I had to applaud her independence but shampoo the carpet.

You don't need me to tell you this but, actually, she sounds really clever and ahead of the game!

Doitnicelyplease says it all. She might manage pull-ups and would save on accidents. Ds3 was 3.3 before he was ready. I had several aborted attempts before that.

Ds2 was my quickest potty trained (night and day) at just over two and he was the slowest of the lot at everything else.

I would consider stopping for now like Doitnicely suggests. Plenty of children are still in nappies past 2.7; anyone who gives you stick for it is an idiot in my book.

DD is pretty much there at 3.5yo, but it was a long road. Still some accidents. In the end I just gave up stressing and figured that she would do it when she was ready, and not when we told her.

I'm not even going to start trying with DS until he's 3. Anything for an easy life!

She sounds exactly like my dd2 - same age, ahead of the curve in all respects other than this one. She is still in nappies. We've had a couple of attempts but after half a day of puddles I gave up. DD1 was similar and finally cracked it just before she was 3.

Anyone who tells you she should be ready just because she's 2 1/2 isn't worth listening to, I realise that many children are trained by this age but not all of them are, and there's no point forcing the issue imo.

So I would put her back in nappies and try every few weeks until she gets it.

I work in a preschool and despite many people being anti pull up i actually find they work really wel for some children.

I would put her in pull ups until the summer, let her be independent when she is in the mood and continue to take her as if she was in pants.

She gets to be praised for weeing and pooing on the toilet and you dont get the mess.

Be kind to yourself and dont stress. Good luck.

I would give it a rest for a while and put her back in nappies, echoing what's also been said here.

And as for the age thing, my DS1 has only gone into pants properly since Christmas and he was 3 at the end of Jan. A friend's DD is still having a few accidents and is 4 in July. What is right for your child is not necessarily what's right for other people's kids.

DS1 is seeming to get the hang of it but we have taken an extremely long and slow road:

1. Pull-ups and lots of talking about big boy underpants. ALso books like "Aliens love underpants".
2. Pull-ups and being taken to the toilet / potty
3. Pull-ups and underpants over the top, plus being taken to toilet/potty regularly (and in other people's houses if their child did)
4. Pull-ups with underpants inside - hint from a friend and found this genius! if accident happens, can do "Oh no, you've weed on Bob the Builder's face" and they get that lovely wet pants feeling...but it's a lot easier to clean up! Plus obviously being taken to t or p.
5. duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-daaa!!!! Nappies off! Big hoo-ha and taken to toilet / potty every hour on the hour and 10 minutes after mealtimes. Potty in living room for quick relief. Treats for wees and poos in either potty or toilet.

This has taken MONTHS! but he is currently 3 days accident free and he's poorlysick at present so I think he's getting it. Will now take himself to potty and will say "I need to do a wee", which means I need to do a poo, and I then stop immediately and cheerlead as he does!!!

You say you're a mum of 4 so you probably don't need this but I hope it gives you something to consider. And lastly, good luck, think of how clever she will be when she can do this as well, smile and grit your teeth! I've promised myself we're having the carpets and upholstery professionally cleaned when he's reliably dry! xxx

2.7 is only little. Don't beat yourself up - put them back in nappies and wait until THEY are ready - as long as it's before they go to school - who cares? And as for the people that go on about what age to potty train (like my mother who insisted I was completely dry at 12 months) - good grief, what a load of nonsense. They should find something more interesting to do!! We don't HAVE to do it super early anymore - thats what pull-up's are for. Honestly, what difference does it make it to the ultimate goal - it's not really an appropriate achievement for a CV! Forget about all the pushy parents and let your little ones be little ones - they grow up so fast anyway! My DS's are all (much older) and perfectly normal - we were never in any rush to get rid of nappies/bottles/dummies/comforters ....

We started pt DS in september he turned 3 end of October. He only cracked it end of February WHEN WE EMIGRATED! Drastic times and all that...... no advice, I fucking hate potty training

And it's now nearly August, 7 months into "potty-training" (ha!) and DD3 is still having upwards of 4 accidents a day (sometimes every 20 mn like today), some of them poos in pants. DD3 turns 3 in a few weeks.

I'm still wondering when somebody is going to pop up and tell me I must be doing it wrong (as though there's a "right" way to mature neural pathways...)

Can you tell I'm really pissed off with potty-training?

My ds is 2.7 and knows when he needs a wee etc but just wees on the floor so I'm not attempting it just yet! Don't worry about what anyone else says when she's ready she'll do it.

People are really weird, aren't they? On one hand you're supposed to be a terrible parent if your child isn't potty trained at 2.5, on the other you're a terrible parent if you try it before then! Is 2.5 the magic Window of Readiness?

Sorry, rant... I guess I would try pull-ups for a bit. It means your DD can still use the potty whe she wants to, you can praise to the skies if the pull-up is dry, but you won't have the clearing up if it isn't, and you're not discouraging her from the potty - she'll get the idea of what it's for soon enough.

Good luck..

Festival, hahaha at Magic Window of Readiness! My children never seem to have one. It's a hard slog for the over 3 years from 2 to 5/6. On the other hand she really can't go to school in nappies, but realistically she will not be "potty-trained" as in dry barring the occasional accident until she is in year 1 if she's going to follow her siblings' suit. Clearly my parenting is defective.

I had not got any of our four older DC day trained by the age of your DD - we won't mention nights. On a practical level I did find old fashioned training pants - terry outside with waterproof inners - very useful. Even though we needed them in the sort of quantity some people buy pull-ups they were much less like a nappy, could be got up and down by DC him/herself but did have some protective effect compared with ordinary pants and saved washing of skirts, shorts and so on. For DDs I also avoided trousers, tights or any other form of tight leg covering to help with speed of potty access. For all that it was quite a long process for all of them. I tried starting at later times with the younger ones, thinking I'd tried too early with the older two, only to think I'd left it too long. If there is a Magic Window of Readiness it stayed firmly shuttered in our house. Sorry can't offer any miraculous solutions - only sympathy and apprehension when it comes to DS3 in about 2 or perhaps 3 or even 4 years - he's now nearly 7 months so you can see my optimism is great.

If you don't want to stop now or go back to nappies/pullups, would it be worth trying something like these? www.drylikeme.com/ I can't recommend them or not as I haven't tried them, but they were something I was considering if DD turned out to be having a lot of accidents. As they are quite expensive, I did see on one forum someone recommending small sanitary towels as another option, just to avoid the worst of the accidents. Again, I haven't tried either, but it might save on some cleaning while your DD gets her head around it all.

We just waited until ds1 told us he wanted "big boy pants". It was on his 3rd birthday (although he was mostly weeing in the toilet before then anyway)

But, a friend of mine has a dd who sounds a bit like yours, she bought loads of cloth liners, you know the ones that go inside cloth nappies? and when her dd insisted on wearing big girl pants, her mum would pop a cloth liner inside. I thought it was a fab idea. The dd was happy in her Peppa Pig pants but any accidents where mostly soaked up by the liner which was chucked straight into the wash.

Good to hear you've had similar problems with your kittens, cat! Very reassuring as I hadn't met any other families with the same problems as ours in the toileting department.

I think you are all right, at the moment my focus is very much on protecting furniture and floors and minimising the amount of washing we have to do. Yesterday for example I had to wash 1 car seat cover (total pain as difficult to take apart), 1 pillow and 1 corner of a quilt (she was sitting on our bed drawing and "forgot herself") + associated covers, one sofa cushion cover, and about 7 pairs of pants and shorts. She peed in her pants roughly twice an hour throughout the day. She crapped herself twice (not her fault, she seemed to have the squits, which she has quite a lot because I think they slip her milk to drink at nursery), although luckily one was in pull ups when I ran out of pants in town after changing her 3 times in 2 hours. Unluckily she pull ups one happened when she was going head first down a slide in the playground, and the pull-ups didn't contain it (total change of clothing).

It's a flipping nightmare. If ANYTHING would have put me off having a 4th child, it would have been the thought of this.

duchesse A is 3.1 and still only poos in his pants. He'll tell me he needs a pee and ask to be taken to the potty for that, but not for poos.

I am refusing to stress about it even though he starts preschool on 24th September and has to be trained by then.

I'll stress about it on 1st September.

Try to relax and just, um, go with the flow.

Tee, I feel your pain. This shall pass. Bug has to be clean and dry by early September as we're going to France for 4 months and nursery will only have her if she's reliably trained. Eeeeeeek

Been through and out the other end of potty training with mine. It was some time ago but I remember dd was easy (sorry not rubbing in it!) she did it herself really but ds was very like your little one. He started about the same time as you and was having many accidents for months and months. The turning point for us was we had some outings with his friend who was trained and could use the toilet and wash his hands by himself. My boy wanted to be the same and decided he could do it and that was that. But he took til he was nearly 4 before being dry at night.

I don't understand this competitive potty-training lark at all. Like almost everyone on here I am firmly in the 'wait until they are completely ready' camp. For some children that's going to be a lot later than 2.5.

DD was 3 on the nose when she did it (and it took one day and one accident). I had tried previously at around 2 when I was still slightly enslaved to the baby books but much like your DC duchesse, DD was peeing with alarming frequency and it was a total failure.

With DS I am not even going to bother trying him until he is around 3 unless he himself is really insistent before this.

2.11 and we're still not really there. The only way to keep her dry is still to take her to the potty every half hour. After 8 months. 8!! She will be 3 yo in a few days. Aaaaaargh!

I have done this 4 times with 4 children. I must be out of my mind.

its too early. if she can't hold on and is wee-ing all the time then the control isn't there yet. give yourself and her a break and back to nappies or pull-ups. don't compare with other kids and don't get angry. nothing like a mum on the rampage to make a nervous child go wee. life is too short to be mopping up accidents all day. read some stories and have a cuddle instead.