When is the right time???

[loopylou0612]

Hi. My daughter is 2.6 years old. She is really interested in the toilet and how it works, can tell me when she needs changing and can mostly anticipate when she is going to go. Only trouble is, she won't sit on a potty, nor the toilet, unless we are at my mum's house.

In terms of her development, I believe she is ready to begin potty training but when is the 'right time'? Also how do you go about it, without having to rely on textbooks?

Same problem with DS here, he just refused to use the potty even when he was telling us when he needed to go since before he was 2.

After 2 weeks of trying to convince him to sit on the potty we conceeded defeat. Tried a couple of months later and he was trained in less than a week. So... I would suggest to start making a game out of sitting on the potty but won't bother with the real thing until she is well familiar and happy to sit on it.

Thanks Chandra! She does experiment with her potty, putting it on her head etc and occasionally will sit on it, as long as she has a nappy on and it is in the living room! I've even tried sitting on it myself to demonstrate, I've always believed in demonstrations with young children!. Still, she refuses!

I even went to Mothercare when I thought she would rather sit on the toilet and bought a special seat and a step, not to mention funky handwash and towels, all especially for her!

Oh Mothercare... I even got him there to try and chose the one he liked best, then had to buy an identical one for the nursery because he refused to use any other type. The regular unexpensive potties were just fireman's hats from his point of view.

Second time round, he didn't even care how the potty looked, as long as it was a potty, things were fine. But as I said, on second time he only used it for about a week and since then he is using the seat that is used over the toilet seat.