essential items for potty training (apart from potty of course!)

[milkyman]

Are there any recommended toilet seats, potties that anyone can recommend before are start?

pull ups...

patience.

imperviousness to other peoples comments about how and when you should be doing potty training. (some children will turn out to have additional needs/physical conditions that make training later than the normal schedule and no amount of putting them in pants and letting them feel the wee helps when they have no idea that they are wet anyway. )

We have a tippitoes seat which gets good reviews, but i have to say i think dd might find one with handles easier. So with hindsight id say get one with handles.

1. The child being ready and interested: one of mine wasn't yet 2, one was 3 1/4.

1. In the early days, a potty upstairs and down, as you won't get much warning.

1. Lots of pants and easy-up spare bottom halves.

1. Perseverance, for the moment, about three days in, when you are fed-up with bodily fluids and nothing seems to be working.

1. For one of mine, I needed a pile of books, so they sat down for long enough. Others used DVDs.

1. I found the Potette (silly name, great invention) ideal when out and about.

1. It is recommended that potty training is less likely to work if something else major is happening at the same time, like a new sibling or moving house. IME, having a couple of days set aside to focus on it, and a willing child, is more important: #1 trained as #2 was a newborn.

Bath lady - I can't use buttons, I would be rewarding myself with the whole packet(s) DSL would have no chance!

I'm using chocolate drops, otherwise there is a chance she'd OD on chocolate by the end of the day.
Giving a few after a meal if no accidents so far is a much better idea - wish I'd thought of that

Agree that potette is good - I used normal white bin liners though. Do the same job for a fraction of the cost.

Another vote for doing it late. DS had just turned 3 and it was a matter of days and we also had no accidents for months afterwards. We didn't bother buying a fancy potty , we just got an IKEA one which was perfectly fine. We have no downstairs loo so it got a lot of use. DS is tall and he was happy with it. The first day I just sat him in front of the telly for a bit (after lots of accidents I must say) and low and behold it was full!
Agree with lots of tracky bottoms and character pants. We had a tippitoes seat for the loo (it's a fiver on Amazon whilst the baby bjoern ones are 30!) and it worked well. Also used an IKEA step.
We did buy the potette for out and about but DS didn't like sitting on it, don't know why, maybe it's not so comfy? So we usually used the loo then or I helped him hold his willy when out in the woods.
If you do potty training in the summer it makes things easier.
Anyway, I think the main thing is to wait until they are ready, it's not a competition (even if friends, family, colleagues are trying to make you feel that way)

We took our cues from DD and bought a couple of potties at 18 months (one for upstairs, one for downstairs) and tried to encourage her to use them in her own time, without making her feel pressured to use them. She was interested, and tried, but she never actually 'used' them though. Then we bought step stools (ikea) and a padded trainer seat (home bargains) for our toilets and she started using them at 26 months We still miss the cue a couple of times a day but we are down down to just 2 pull ups nappies per 24 hours and are considering just switching to knickers soon.

This is our list -

1. Pull up nappies (we use Huggies, DD loves the pictures on them)
2. Padded trainer seat for toilet (ours are only from zoomed bargains)
3. Step stool (ikea)
4. Lots of songs ready to sing with lo whilst waiting for something to happen
5. Baby wipes for wiping the bum before using toilet paper, as we found tp on it's own to be too harsh.
6. Hand wash, every time, it's never too early to teach basic hygiene
7. Most importantly, a DC that's ready

Good luck x