Potty training a toddler - he thinks the potty is a toy - help please !

[yellowrose]

Hello everyone

Apologies if this has been asked a million times before, but could you give me some advice about potty training my son (2.2 years old)?

He is being brought up bilingually, so a bit of a late speaker although he understands everything we say, he understands and says the word "poo" !!

I bought a potty with very good intentions of getting him properly trained quickly (my in-laws are coming over to stay with us for about a month end of this month).

Any way, I don't want to rush my son to make the mother in law happy, but I want to keep son and I happy, so what do I do ?

I have a potty and lots of pull ups. I read somewhere that you should allow the toddler to "play" with the potty which I did do, but now he thinks it's a toy and takes it out of the loo and brings it to the living room to sit on, like a chair !

How do I get him to understand its for pooing and not playing ? As I say he understands the word poo and when I point to it he does somehow relate the potty to poo, but what is the next step ? He doesn't tell me he wants to poo, so how do I get him to do that ?

He is in nappies still all day because I am worried about accidents. Should he be bare bottomed all day ?

The only sure fire way of potty training is to go for it 100%, no more nappies, plonking them on the potty regularly, lots of praise when they manage something in the potty and definitely no pull ups (they're too similar to nappies), only pants.

2.2 is still quite young, especially for a boy. Is he showing any physical signs of needing to go - clutching his nappy when he wees, wanting wet/dirty nappies changing, showing you he's pooed/weed? If he isn't he's probably not ready.

We had a potty around the place for months before ds trained. He used to sit on it to watch the telly (with his nappy on - he wouldn't go near it with his nappy off) and play with it but he wasn't interested in sitting on it properly.

I took him to buy 'big boy's pants' when he was about 2.5, the following morning he announced he wanted to wear them so I told him he had to do all his wees and poos in the potty. I reminded him every half hour or so in the morning, he managed a couple of wees in the potty and had 3 accidents. In the afternoon he told me he wanted a wee, did it on the potty and we've never looked back. It just seemed to click for him and although we had a few accidents in the first week he's really reliable now, 2 months on.

If you only want to potty train him before your MIL comes then I wouldn't. It's not worth the stress if he isn't ready. By all means try him nappyless for a day but be prepared for lots of accidents!!!

Why don't you try putting him on the potty every night before his bath, or at a time when you know he's quite likely to poo? It might help him to ealise what it's for without giving you too much cleaning up. Then you can let him tell you when he's ready to do it properly.

Thanks so much for your reply !

Since I bought the potty, he is actually showing signs of being uncomfortable with wet/soiled nappies. He actually holds his nappy too when he has done something and does a disgusted/crunched up face, so yes, defo. showing signs of not liking nappies ! He also pulls nappy off in his cot, so I have resorted to putting him into sleeping bags he can't unzip !

Ok, may be it is a bit early, mother in law says its too late, so I was confused !!

I think I will wait until they have gone rather than push him to get trained in the next 2 weeks.

Thanks again, I will come back for more news and advice.