Does this mean he isn’t ready for potty training?

[Aerialturns]

My DS (nearly 3) will wee when told to sit on the potty and we praise him and tell him how well he has done, etc.

The problem is he doesn’t say he needs a wee. So without constantly putting him on the potty (and I mean at thirty minute intervals) he wets himself and there’s currently no progress with poo.

I don’t know how to get to ‘I need a wee.’ Any advice?

How long have you been trying? It can take a few days for it to click.

What do you do during/after he has an accident? We used to whisk DD off to the potty to try and catch the rest and to try and build the association. Works better for poos cause you get a few moments' notice when they stop and do "the face".

We’ve just been getting him changed - should we be doing anything different?

We took it slowly doing an hour of nappy free time of days she wasn't in nursery. Then 2h then half a day once we got to most of the day we took the plunge and potty trained. She did pretty but we had the time build up the language to get her to describe needing a wee and what phrases would not work to get her to sit on the potty.
She has toddler diarrhoea so the poos have been a bit more of a challenge but in the last month or so she's cracked those about 6 months after we started the potty training process.

He may not be ready. Could you put him back in nappies/pull-ups for another few months and try again after Christmas? My DS (who is 13 now) took ages for it to click. He didn't have reliably good awareness until he was 4 or 5, although I think part of that was denial. He hated interrupting his play to go to the toilet and would prefer to go in his pants 🙄. I got very good at noticing the signs of needing a wee and whisking him to the toilet. I wish I had a great trick for you to try but DS just gradually got better at going pee when he needed to. No amount of treats, reward charts or castigation made any lasting difference for us and it wasn't until the latter part of P1 that he reliably made it to the toilet.
Sorry, that might not be what you want to hear. I always had a change of clothes handy and made the least amount of fuss possible about it once I realised that me getting stressed made it worse.

I wouldn't necessarily worry about the not saying he needs a wee yet, but if he needs to go every 30 minutes, that would make me inclined to go back to nappies – I just wouldn't find it very practical for him or me to be going to the toilet that often for weeks on end. DD1 took a few weeks to really start saying she needed a wee, for example, but she only needed prompting every 2-3 hours, which was quite manageable.

I am wondering if he’s used to dribbling little bits out in a nappy and hasn’t learned to ‘hold on’ for a bigger wee bit not sure how to teach that!

Maybe have a read of Oh Crap Potty Training. The step you seem to be missing is identifying the urge to go. Get yourself a book about the body, and teach him how the bladder works. When it’s full, he will feel a tingle or a pressure - his bladder sending a message to him to take action and head to the toilet. A balloon full of water is useful here too, showing how it fills up and when we get the message that we need a wee. Then it’s his job to take charge and run to the toilet. Lots of language about it being his job, let’s do it, you’re in charge of your body, you tell me when you feel the tingle, etc. Then you spend a few days bottomless and when you see he’s about to wee (or even has started weeing), you point out that he must have felt the tingle/urge and so let’s squeeze the muscle while we head to the toilet. Then when on the toilet we relax it. At first it will go on the floor but once you get him there it will click. But in my experience only if he can identify the urge and only if he feels ownership. If you are telling him when to wee then he doesn’t get a shot at learning how his own body feels. Then in the future you can just throw out a casual ‘have a listen to your body - how’s your bladder feeling?’ and he can assess whether he needs to go, rather than mummy saying ‘it’s time to wee!’ The dribbling thing consolidates in the first week in my experience, and as you say it’s to do with previously having the nappy and no idea of the sensation of urge, so no need to wee strategically. Good luck!

We’re a bit old for Oh Crap - I know a lot of people on here seem to like it but I don’t know, I don’t really like the naked from the waist down thing.

I always dreaded potty training!

You don't teach it. They learn it.
This first hour my daughter had without a nappy on she weed 5 or 6 times. Just little ones.
The second time we did an hour she did the same.
The third time we did an hour something clicked and she did went over half an hour without weeing.
She had an accident and we persuaded her to sit on the potty for the rest of the hour in front to the TV just to try to get her comfort with being sat on it. She didn't wee again.

Slowly she built up her wees.
The first couple of weeks of full potty training she did about 10 wees an hour but only if the potty was available. She managed 20 minutes from us gathering our stuff and getting coats and shoes on to me dropping her off at nursery without an accident. Most days she managed the 30 minutes to my parents as well but in the house weed loads in the 2 weeks after we started full time potty training!

My DS didn’t reliably initiate going to the potty for quite a few weeks/ months after he was trained. Just ask him to go to the potty before you leave the house / when you come in, and regular intervals in between.

Also is he still wearing a nappy? Take it off in the day, it’s not fair to expect him to wear a nappy and not wee in it - that’s muscle memory from the day he was born.

If my DS started wetting himself, I would say “stop. Hold the wee inside and go to the potty”. He’ll get better and better at stopping the wee mid-flow and will then start realising before it’s about to happen.

They really need to have an awareness of what is happening when they wee so no bottoms lets them see what is happening when they get that sensation. Also clothes can feel a bit like the snug nappy they are used to.

And also it’s quicker for you to notice they’ve started weeing and get them to the potty!

Thanks. He was in pants but we had to make a long journey so used a nappy. I think this is what’s so hard, he will wee when you tell him to sit on the potty / toilet but it’s literally every 30 minutes which doesn’t fit easily with life!