What do you do when your child wont sit down on the potty???

[susanmt]

Ds is almost exactly 2 and a half. He knows all about toilet functions, tells me when he goes (in his nappy) and knows that you pee and poo in the potty or the toilet. As far as I can see he is ready to potty train. BUT I can't get him to sit down on the potty. He wont even sit with his clothes on. He wont sit to read a favoutite book or to sing a song or to 'show Dd2 what to do' - which he likes doing for lots of other things like eating tea and getting in the bath. I am honestly thinking about bribing him with something sweet (bad mummy) as I am sure that once he sits down it will be a doddle.

Every time I ask him to sit on the potty or toilet he says 'No. not just now' (his favourite phrase at the moment for everything) and if I try to persuade him he gets stroppy (and boy! can he strop! he could strop for Scotland no problem).

Any tips on how to make him try sitting on the potty or the loo (I have a trainer seat). I didn't have this problem with dd1 at all, and am at a bit of a loss!

Thanks a lot!

Will your DS wee into the potty standing up? My DS won't sit on the potty either - he's tried a few times but it looks really uncomfortable and he never stays there for very long! He is 2yrs 3months and we've been potty training for a week now - we started because, like your DS, he would tell us when he was going etc. He will sit on the trainer seat, but won't produce anything whilst he is there.

So far, things are going fine in terms of wees. He tells us he needs a wee then does it standing up with his legs slightly open and we hold the potty up for him to catch the wee. He's got pretty reliable at this - no accidents over the weekend. Has a nappy put on when he wants a poo. I know it's not as convenient as when they will take themselves off to the potty and do it by themselves, but I guess for a while they all need some sort of supervision with this anyway.

We are hoping that once the wees are well and truly mastered we will get him to start using the trainer seat, and that we will then make some progress with poos.

Good luck!

I'd go with the sweets, susan! My ds is the same age as yours (almost exactly, I think), & we potty trained last month. We spent a long time telling him that if he peed on the potty he'd get Smarties which worked a treat. He got through 1 tube of sweets before we quietly dropped the idea, so it didn't turn into a habit. He 'got' the whole thing very quickly, it was just a matter of finding what worked (my mum & dp had been hassling for ages to train him but I was determined to wait 'til I thought he was ready & am therefore taking full credit for the lack of accidents!).

I have just potty trained DD over the last couple of weeks and by day 5 she had it down to a fine art (I honestly thought it would take so much longer).

I did bribe with sweets (bad mummy) - a chocolate button if she would sit for a while, which eventually turned into a button if she did anything, and also used a sticker chart. I would read her a story or tell her to stay whilst I went to fetch her choclate button (very slowly) from the kitchen.

I started off asking her all the time if she wante to wee but she got bored of me quickly doing that, so I starte asking her every hour.

Eventually after she had done a couple of wees an got lots of praise and hugs and a button and a sticker, she wanted that all the time and has pretty much used the potty consistently since then with only a couple of accidents.

x

Try him on the toilet, otherwise just give up for a while. My DS1 was very stubborn about not sitting on the potty at that age - trained successfully at just over 3.

Susanmt - my boys were both a bit like this. They certainly wouldn't do the "sit on the potty for 10 mins and read a book or watch TV and wait to see if anything happens" a la Gina Ford.

We just took the nappies off and left them off, and promised a sticker for each successful performance. They were very much of the model: "I need the potty NOW ... mad dash ... perform instantly, then return to play".

But they were both completely dry within 7 days (when aged 24 mnths), and very quickly learned to hang on a bit, recognise the signs, and give a bit of advance warning.

PS I don't know if this is a physiological boy/girl difference...? Some of the girls I know would sit on the potty for ages, knowing they needed a wee, but struggling to actually make it happen. With my boys they never struggled to do a wee when they needed one, it was much more a question of whether they made it there in time or not!