Need advice re: potty/toilet training nearly 3 year old DS

[HellyBelly]

My ds will be 3 in March and I'm trying to get him ready for potty/toilet training.

I am a childminder and had no problem toilet training a mindee when she was 2½ (July last year) - straight onto toilet, no potty. My ds loves to watch and is really interested in anyone using the toilet. Keeps asking questions about mummy and daddy's 'bits' and saying 'mummy not have a winky, just hair!'

Anyway, I always very casually ask if he wants to try sitting on potty/toilet and sometimes he says yes. He's been on the toilet with a softie (no nappy) and the potty with and without nappies.

He's happy to sit on the potty but doesn't want to do the business on it. The other day, we were running a bath and he took his nappy off then before I'd finished running the water, he was asking me to put his nappy on as needed a wee. He sat on the potty just before but did not want to wee in it - insisting he wanted a nappy for that.

I'm not quite sure if this means he's not ready or he has some kind of phobia? He did once (months ago) see mindee slip into the toilet a bit. She'd decided a while before not to use the softie anymore as she liked being a big girl. Well one day she didn't concentrate so much and let go so lowered into the bowl a bit - she was fine but maybe that made him worry a bit? Could also be because she's been having accidents out of lazyness recently and he knows mum isn't happy about this so maybe he's worried about that?????

OR, is he just plain not ready?

Any advice anyone?

I'm not minding today and he's currently sat on his potty (with nappy on) and baby (doll) is sat on her potty opposite him!

My neice, would'nt use the potty unless she was in private, have you tried leaving the room when he sits on it??

Good idea - will try that - could end up with a right mess but at least we'd have moved a step forward!

I'm having the same problem with dd. she'll quite happily say wee wee and sit on the potty but just won't do anything.

Its starting to get me down now!! I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

Horrible isn't it!! I really need to get ds out of nappies as they cost too much and dh lost his job on xmas eve so money is VERY tight!

I know boys are quite often later starters but he knows when he needs a poo and stuff (once at park round corner he said he couldn't go down the slide as needed a poo, I checked and nothing, few mins later I could smell one! SO, he knew he needed to go!)

Oh well, will try leaving him on his own to do it (that's what the bear does in the potty story we read!)

Good luck to others trying

I just think there comes a point where you have to take them out of nappies and pull-ups which feel just the same to little ones so they're happy to carry on using them like nappies. With DD1 I waited till summer (she was just over 2) and put her in big girl pants or nothing at all on her bottom half and put potties all over the place and just let kept encouraging her to use them. There were quite a few accidents but after a couple of days she was pretty much using the potty all the time. We were completely relaxed about the whole thing and so she was.

I've tried that, ds has Thomas nappies and happy to wear them without a nappy but he goes into panic when needing a wee/poo and really cries to have his nappy on I've been relaxed so far and don't want to force the issue as this could make things harder.

I don't use pull ups by the way.

I'll just keep trying and seeing if he's ready, it's just strange to me that he happy to sit on them but panics and wants his nappy for doing the business.

after months of persuading my ds it was time to use toilet and him refusing, 3 years and 3 months he told me he wanted to start potty training,10 days later he was dry day and night.hooray