Any advice parents who are about to start their potty training journey with their toddler?

[PottyMouthMommy]

We've decided to start potty training our dear daughter at 20 months at the beginning of spring.

Any advice or recommendations? Anything you wish you knew before you potty trained your littles?

I have five kids, I waited until they were ready, varying ages between 15 months (didn't encourage they just did it) and three years (some encouragement)

No but I'd like to follow this as we will be doing the same with our nearly 19 month old daughter around the same time! I didn't think we'd start until she was over 2 but a lot of the cues are there already.

We just let our child work it, first sat on the potty then the toilet and just went from there we didn't have any input ourselves

Like a PP said, wait until she tells you she wants to stop wearing nappies. And that will be it! Perhaps a couple of accidents at first but it’s a much easier and less painful way for everyone. When they’re ready, they’re ready.

In practice, how do you define ready?? I am unsure of when would be best to start for mine just turned 2. She is aware of when she is doing/has done a wee/poo & will tell me afterwards but hasn't indicated beforehand that she needs to go which I have read may help.

Is it just a case of just starting and see how it goes. Have read various methods of putting them on potty every 15 mins etc.

I thought it had to be cold turkey or nothing. With both of ours it's been more incremental, because of our busy lives, and there being times (long motorway car journeys, caring for others etc) when a sudden wee stop would be hard, and we aren't yet at a point of it being fair to say "wait 15mins!" So we had quite a bit of "just pop your nappy on for a couple of hours because x, no problem if you wee in it, or if you'd rather wait til we can get to a loo. It doesn't matter". We went from no nappy for 1/2 hour here and there, to no nappy anytime we are home, to no nappy most of the time, to no nappy at all, over about 3 weeks, with very very few accidents, no tears and very little stress. Also we had very little privacy on the loo ourselves so they were completely normalised by toilets etc. Both kids showed interest first, and both kids we cheered for any try even if no wee/poo, and did acouple of days of bribery with grapes (1 for a wee, 2 for a poo). We were lucky, it worked a treat!

Start late, finish at the same time as everyone else. Let the child lead. Personally I think your DD is way too young and you'll be stringing the process out. If you hung on til she was at least two and a half it'd be easier. Just my opinion. All my friends had girls and started training early - was a nightmare. Think my boy was three and a half. Used the potty one fine day for a wee, then a while later for poos and was dry at night from then on in. No day-time accident at all. My friend who insisted on training her daughter early had daily accidents and the girl wasn't dry at night until she was nearly 6. I honestly think with some kids the pressure and parental stress makes it harder and less successful. What does it matter if she's in nappies another 6 months or year?

Waited until mine said no nappy and pointed to the toilet instead at nearly 3. Bought a potty and it was so easy! Definitely later than a lot of friends but no hassle.

Agree with PP, don't start too early. DS was nearly 3 and DD was a month after her 3rd birthday but they were ready. DD went straight to being dry at night too.

My nieces were 'potty trained' early but I think it was more their parents who were potty trained. For about a year they were dashing off to loos and carrying a potty around and constantly watching for signs, far easier to wait to the child is ready.

So my advice would be start later and ignore anyone who tells you how early their child was out of nappies.

I don't particularly feel rushed. We felt she was ready in October because she was able to communicate her needs verbally and can clearly say peepee and poopoo. "I'm hungee/tirsty" The only reason we waited is because she couldn't pull get pants down yet and we live in a snowy area (we are Canadian) and thought if we have to take her to the store if might be difficult because we would have to remove her snowpants.

She can now pull her pants down and is using what we have dubbed potty language! 😂

Yes following other posters my two were older...girl 30 months, boy 35 months,

Just go with your DD no pressure. My first DS loved praise and reward charts and a prize when he succeeded. 2nd DS wants complete privacy, doesn't want to discuss it at all and asks me to leave the room and shut the door while he's on the toilet! I would recommend before you even think about potty training get her used to being on the toilet, so while brushing teeth at night or before bath sit her on the toilet and if she does anything that's great but if not she'll just be less overwhelmed by the whole thing. Also I've never heard of anyone else's kids training for poop first but both mine did, I sat them on the toilet if I saw them trying to move their bowels and neither soiled a nappy since about 2, long before they were potty trained.

1. don’t call it a potty training journey ffs.
2. why have you decided the spring at 20 months? What if she’s not ready? That’s very early.

don’t go too early. Wait until she shows you she’s ready. Talk about the potty, buy her one so she can see it.

I waited until my son was ready at 2 and a few months. It wasn’t a journey. It took 3 days.

I avoided a potty, got them straight on the loo. I used a little stool to help them get to the right height (they are in their 20's now and I still have that stool, v useful for the top shelf of the kitchen cupboards) and a plastic smaller loo seat on top of the normal one to fit them so they didn't feel like they might fall in. Skipping the potty stage seemed obvious to me, as we were aiming (forgive the pun) for the actual loo anyway.

Thank you for the advice. I certainly wouldn't want to be dashing around. That does sound very stressful! 🥲

Well I don't know if your first suggestion really feels helpful. And to the second point what if she is ready? 🤷🏻‍♀️ maybe your journey only took 3 days. 😁

20 months is not early, it totally depends on the child. My daughter walked into the kitchen at 22 months with a pack of wipes, telling us she just did a poo. We started potty training the next day and she was done in a week, took another week to be 100 % reliable. Absolutely take your cues from your child.

Also depends on your definition of potty trained. For me pees and poos in the toilet was considered trained. Others would say they have to pull down pants independently/wipe/wash hands.

Personally I would also wait until she can communicate a bit better and until she is definitely ready

if she isn’t actually ready you could spend the best part of this year potty training

it she is ready you can do it over a long weekend - which is what we did with our 2.5 year old

get a book called “potty training in 3 days”. We went all in - so no pull ups but proper underwear during the day (not at night as that takes longer). We went straight for the toilet rather than potty unless we were out and about - for that purpose get the pottette which is a foldable potty and toilet seat in one for when you are out and about

our method as per the book was to take our child to the toilet every single time they needed to wee and give rewards - we did that for 3 days and by the end she was potty trained. Occasional accidents at nursery after but really not many

it was very very easy because she was ready

Also I’m not sure why anyone would want to rush it. When children are potty trained you always need to be near a toilet or a place you can use a potty

its less convenient for a while

My two both hated the potty and preferred a baby seat on the toilet. They wanted to go to the loo like a grown up, and loved flushing the cistern. While shouting “Bye bye poo!” at the top of their voices, but we shall draw a veil over that..

Thank you. I think this thread went a bit off the rails. I guess I should have known there would be a lot of strong opinions about this. But my child picks up on things very quickly. I have never rushed her into anything I felt she was not ready for. If we try to teach her something and she is clearly struggling we back off. We don’t force it. I’m also a stay at home mother so I’ve got plenty of time on my hands. We aren’t dashing around between work and daycare.

I think I’ll leave the thread up but I kind of regret sharing her age now because I feel like that’s became the main focus of the comments when the intention was something else entirely.

If potty training my child “too early” makes me a bad mom then I guess I might as well buy the T-shirt and wear it too. Lol.

Ignore the PPs claiming it's too early. In some countries they start potty training as early as a few weeks old- there's no choice due to a lack of availability of nappies etc.

Every kid is different- some walk/talk at 10 months some don't until 24 months. I don't know why people can't accept the same thing about potty training. No one ever accuses those with babies that walked early that they were being rushed into it.

We were told by our HV that 2y 9mos was the optimum time to try. I confess I didn't research this further as I realised that point for DD coincided with the Jubilee long weekend when we'd be off work/nursery and home anyway.

Honestly it was a piece of piss, pardon the pun. DD got it very quickly and we've had less than 10 accidents (including nursery) since the nappies went off in the daytime in June. DD has always followed me to the loo, but in the weeks leading up to starting I actively encouraged her to come with me and chatted to her about wees and loos, "Mummy doesn't wear nappies, Mummy wees in the toilet", all that. I also got two books, Poo Poo Bum Bum Wee Wee which she loved, and another picture book. I think the clincher was her understanding and speech was at a level that we could both communicate what needed to happen effectively. Being with potty-trained older kids at nursery also helped, because she wanted to be one of the big girls who use the toilets rather than have nappies changed.

We stayed with nappies at nighttime until very recently as maybe 1 night out of 7 she was still wetting, then about two weeks ago she said she wanted to wear knickers at night under her jammies. We explained this meant that she'd have to wee when she brushed her teeth at bedtime and...that was that.

There were others on my birth month group who tried pre-24mos and it really was very mixed. There were a few who really beat themselves up about trying and 'failing' early, kids being upset or resistant, and then the parents panicking about giving the kids a toilet complex.

Ignore the PPs claiming it's too early. In some countries they start potty training as early as a few weeks old- there's no choice due to a lack of availability of nappies etc.

^ that's elimination communication and totally different to traditional western potty training the OP is talking about.

I was also thinking of potty training mine around 20 months and all these parents had me second guessing myself. So I looked it up on google to try to figure out if I was just a crazy lady rushing my kid or not. Google seems to disagree. Maybe they’re those jealous angry competitive parents? 🤨 I wouldn’t worry about them OP.