Potty or training seat?

[Candycats]

Hi everyone,

I have a nearly 17 month old son who is showing some signs of being ready for potty training soon, although I don't think he's quite ready yet. However, I want to be prepared for when he is and I want him to get used to the idea of it before we actually do it. So I'm looking into buying a potty or a training toilet seat, but I don't know which is better. What are people's experiences of this? I like the idea of a potty as it's portable, but I like the training seat as it's closer to using a proper toilet.

Thank you!

I went for both.

I used potty to begin with. And then we progressed onto a toilet seat. (:

A potty is really good to catch wees and concept train, but are not the best long term solution. The sooner a child can manage on the toilet the better, esp if they are going to nursery/school soon.

You’ll need both, but I’d definitely start with a potty, because at the beginning you won’t have much notice/warning when they need to go. We had 2 downstairs and 1 upstairs (though you could obviously carry one from room to room). They were £2.50 from Ikea so not a huge investment.

Also your child will be able to get themselves on to a potty much earlier than they will be able to climb on to a toilet. We potty trained our DS at 18 months using a potty. He’s 27 months now and still can’t climb on to the toilet without help.

We did also use a training seat from the start though to get him used to going on the toilet so that we could use public toilets when out and about. We don’t take the training seat with us, he just uses normal toilets and we help hold him, but the training seat at home helped get him used to it.

PS there’s no need to “get him used” to a seat/potty before you actually start training him. It won’t make any sense to him until you start the training process anyway. We used the Oh Crap method which advises against doing this as actually the novelty value can be useful.

We used a toilet seat that had the smaller seat built in. Much better than a separate one.

Read oh crap potty training - that will help with your decision. Potty trained day and night in under a week over here!!

We had a thing called a family toilet seat - it had an extra seat in it, so adults and toddlers could choose the appropriate size. Much more secure than a removable training seat. Highly recommended.

We've used both - you don't get much notice at the start so having a potty to hand is really useful. I think the position helps with poos too, I'm not sure I'd be able to poo with my feet dangling in the air!

A problem with using the toilet is that dangling legs aren't very comfy and aren't a great position for pooing. There are ladder seats that go on the toilet but have a built in step which are good for both comfort and independence.

Thanks for your replies everyone, lots to consider here!

We potty trained DS at 18 months and used both from the start. Potty had benefits that it could be moved around, garden etc, and easier to get child on the potty in time at the beginning when they can’t always hold it to get to the toilet. Potty also allowed DS to be more independent as he was quite small to get on and off the toilet and needed help. However toilet seat straight from the start was good too so he didn’t need to make another transition, could use toilets out and about and not having to clean poop out of a potty was always welcome! Definitely reasons to have both.

Second vote for the Oh Crap method. We haven’t attempted overnight dryness yet as I formally believe this is hormonal and will come when the child is ready, but it was a good approach to day dryness.

A double step for the toilet is better than a single step, when potty training a younger and therefore shorter, child.