Day 7: Potty Training help please

[RachSt12]

Hi,
I really need some help please.

My son is 3, and I totally thought he was ready to be potty trained, he told us when he needed a wee and poo and was forever taking off his nappies.
He choose some new pants, his little potty, we created a star chart together so we started.
We are on day 7 now, he can hold his wee for around 1.5/2hrs and we’ve been on several long journeys and he’s been fine.
The problem is is that I initiate him going to the toilet, it just hasn’t clicked for him yet: he doesn’t think- I need a wee, I’ll go to the toilet.
We’ve had lots of accidents today as he’s just wetting himself and not even bothered about it (it seems worse today than it has been all week).
He understands where wee and poo goes and his communication is very good.
He’s so happy to receive a star too.
With poo, I feel like we’ve taken a backwards step almost, he now hides and starts to go and then I ask him if he needs to go and finishes off on the toilet.
When I speak to my friends, particularly those with twins they tell me it can take a couple of weeks to click, perhaps my son is that child?
Am I missing anything? Or is it a case of being patient?
He doesn’t want to wear nappies and likes wearing his big boy pants. xx

I highly recommend reading 'Oh crap! Potty training'.

It breaks down how children learn to go to the toilet stage by stage. Explains the issues that arise during potty training and how to overcome them. Don't panic about having a child slightly older than the book's 'ideal' age range. I just trained my 3 yo and it's been fine.

Good luck!

you do need to treat poo and wee as separate skills. dd sorted wees quite quickly but was doing poos in pants for weeks.

there's an app called poo goes home to pooland that might help

Download and show him Poo Goes to Pooland, might help get his confidence back

Cross post, sorry!

7 days is really not very long. He could still be having accidents for months which would be totally normal. Just keep being consistent with it.

Also, doing poo is totally different to doing wee so don’t assume that if you can do one in the potty you can do the other.

Sounds similar to how my ds was! We tried for a week and then almost gave up as thought he wasn't ready but then something clicked. He definitely got the hang of the wee side of things first though with poos a little while after. Would say keep persevering!

We used the "Oh Crap!" method and he was dry within 3 days and mastered poos within 10 days. The only difference was we left his pants on all the time so he knew what wet and dirty felt like.
With poos, every time he went in his pants, we put it in the potty and said "poo goes in the potty". It was good as he got to see the poo and smell it and flush it away so it really lost all mystery.
We did huge amounts of praise when he told us he needed to go, as did everyone else....although now he sort of announces it when we're out in public, then praises himself but oh well!
Both DH and I also told DS when we needed to go too. He sort of clicked from there that if you need to go, you tell people. We made a game out if having a poo too, who can pull the funniest face and lots of made up poo songs. When out and about if we saw some animal poo we would talk about it and just tried to make it BAU for him.

Use the book other posters have suggested. Its brilliant! Bit ni need to leave pants on - that just creates muscle memory so they are more likely to pee and poo in pants because they remember their nappy. Read the book and follow it. It totally works!!

I don’t think you need to worry about being the one to initiate him going to the loo at the moment as it’s very early on. Taking themselves there seems to come a little bit later on once they’ve got used to regularly weeing in the right place.