Potty Training - Do I give up for the time being or not? advice please.....

[mankymummy]

Well, its been a week, DS (3 in Aug) does some wees and poos on the toilet/potty, i have been asking him all the time if he needs to go, got big boy pants, stickers etc., been keeping an eye on what he drinks and times so i can catch it etc.

But... he just keeps weeing on the floor, i think its partly that he gets distracted but on a couple of occasions i've noticed he's started weeing in his pants and then holds his willy to try and stop it which would indicate to me he's not 100% sure when he's about to go.

Do you think i should give it up for a bit?

He keeps saying he wants his nappies back. I dont want to traumatise him if hes not ready just yet...

I thought at nearly 3 he should be ready (and of course lots of people tell me he should have been trained MONTHS ago!).

What made you think he was ready to start, or was it just an age thing?

I think personally I would give it a rest for a couple of months. When DS was doing that startled-by-weeing, holding-willy-to-try-to-stop-it thing he definitely wasn't ready, but a few months later potty-trained very quickly with no problems.

well he had started doing a wee and poo voluntarily on the toilet before his bath every night and at nursery he'd been asking for the toilet so I thought i'd try it.

not an age thing (although i suppose i was a bit sick of everyone saying "is he STILL in nappies?" [grrr].

i'm certainly not going to push him into it if he's not ready but i didnt want to hold him back either IYSWIM.

how old was your DS when you tried at first and then tried again?

i think you are probably right and I'll give it another few months.

We didn't actually try at first, but I noticed that wee thing you described happening when he was getting ready for/in/just out of the bath, which is why I thought he wasn't ready. He was 2.9 when he did potty train, and had been asking for the toilet pretty much every time he needed to go at nursery. For a month or two before that he'd been asking for the toilet or potty but it didn't seem to bear much relation to when he actually needed to go IYSWIM -- that stage lasted about two months and then suddenly it seemed to click, he asked to go when he actually needed to and he was trained very quickly.

That seemed a common pattern among his friends, too -- a couple of months of asking for the potty/toilet at random times and then suddenly getting the hang of it. So my completely uninformed guess is that maybe your DS is at the start of that phase, beginning to get the hng of the concept but just not quite in tune with the signals yet. If I'm right (and I am far from a world expert on this, so take my suggestions with a pinch of salt) you may find that a couple of months will make all the difference.

thanks so much, I think you've basically just said in a nutshell what i've been thinking myself.