How do I get DS to tell me he needs the potty?

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I need some advice please.

I started potty training DS (2.7) 4 days ago. So far he's only had about 3 accidents and is doing briliantly well. However, I'm doing all of the 'Right - it's time to have a wee' prompting every 45 minutes or so (which seems to be successful).

Obviously though I need to get him to tell me that he needs to wee/poo instead of me telling him - how do I do that? Does it just come to him gradually? (The only times I've tried to leave him to tell me have been the times he's wet his pants.) Or do I just start leaving it longer between getting him to sit on the potty?

He's night-time nappy is normally bone-dry BTW, so he's obviously capable of bladder/bowel control!

Please can someone in the know advise me here? Thanks!

He can only do it if he recognises the signs that he needs a wee. If he doesn't, then you're on a hiding to nothing expecting him to tell you that he needs the potty.

Night-time dryness is a separate issue, as it's more about hormones than about bladder control, so don't automatically assume that it means he's ready to be dry in the day.

You can carry on prompting him, if you think you can keep it up, or you can wait for another few weeks and see if he's more ready then.

If he's definitely ready now will he automatically start telling me that he needs to go if I stop doing the prompting though? Or is it something he has to 'learn' by weeing in his pants several times 1st?

Why don't children come with a user-guide?

He won't really learn by weeing his pants. Although that will get him used to the feeling of being wet, it won't get him used to the sensation of needing a wee. That's the signal he needs to recognise.

I'm a big believer in waiting until they are ready, rather than spending weeks potty-training, so that colours my view on this somewhat! When he's ready he'll be there in ten minutes.

ds who we've been training for a few weeks does better if we let him tell us rather than keep reminding him. I ask him about once an hour, but he is free to say no.

WE had about a day of him wetting but much better since then.

Thanks Armadillo.

Well, I've just had the bizarre experience of DS - completely unprompted - going to sit on the potty and saying he needed to poo - and actually doing so! I was pretty sure that he was ready for this whole training milarky - and hopefully I'm right!

So how many days/weeks/months before I can go on a decent length car trip etc?

What I have found is that if I'd ask my DS if he needed a wee, it would mean to him 'stop playing', 'come inside the house', 'stop having fun for a minute'... so it took him some time to ask me he needed a wee. He had accidents most often if he was in the garden, playing away being very busy.

Most of the time, at the start, I would say 'you must need a wee now after all that juice you drank' instead of asking him a question (at 2 yo anyway most answers to questions is NO). After a little while, he started being able tohold it in a bit longer and ask for potty.

I rekon it took about 2 weeks for him to say 'I need a wee' reliably without being prompted. About 3 days for poos if I remember well.

Decent lenth car trip - I still put a nappy on him after 6 months, if we go on a long journey, as he will fall asleep almost for sure, and it's a lot to ask for a little one to hold it for a long time. I just don't want to put any pressure on him.

Long car trips - we didn't put dd in a nappy for car trips once she was starting to be dry because we felt it would confuse her to sometimes be allowed to wee in a nappy and sometimes not.

We got a piddle pad for the car seat (washable, seat-shaped pad with a waterproof backing) and carried a potty with us. As we came up to every service station or layby we asked if she needed a wee, and we would stop and let her use the potty if she wanted to. It wasn't long before she was able to hang on for a while until we got her to a toilet, but it was definitely worth taking the potty with us when she was first dry.

The falling asleep worried us for a while, but we just crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. She never did wee in her car seat while she was dozing though - which was odd seeing that she wasn't dry at night until she was six and a half.

Whenever we were out and about on the train or the bus I made a point of always knowing where the toilets were, asking her every twenty minutes if she needed a wee, and taking her every hour whether she wanted to or not (although she got really annoyed with me after a couple of weeks, stamped her foot and shouted that she would tell me when she needed a wee ... I didn't do it again!).

And always, always, always carry a change of clothes with you just in case.

Thanks for the advice.

We often do longish trips, so we'll just need to re-adjust our mindset to ensure we always stop at service stations etc.

We've taken the potty everywhere for the last few days and very few accidents (so far). He's now telling me when he wants to go rather than relying on me telling him which is great.

(I'm nervous of being too optimistic though - it's less than 5 days since we started this and it could still go very wrong!)

I took a potty in the car when training dd1 we did a 4 1/2 hour journey to Norfolk in the second week and she managed to stay dry all the way. However she refused to use the potty but demanded instead to be able to make a puddle in the grass like her big boys(2 older brothers). The upshot was that Mummy ended up with a puddle in her shoe . Which takes me back to that recent thread about the gross stuff we do now we are parents.

ok, we have a DD who has just refused to wear a nappy today, liked wearing some pants, looked wiggly after dinner and eagerly went to do a wee on the potty (only about the 3rd time ever), did a wee, then wanted to wipe her own bottom, pull up her pants, and play on the floor, I knew a poo was on its way but was BF my DS so couldn't get there in time, but DH checked her as the poo was on its way out, or just afetr and popped her on the potty to finish it off, cheer, clap, wipe poo off pottry and put pants in nappy bucket. Thing is, do I start officially pants-not-nappies day tomorrow, and if so, what do I do about going out to toddler group etc. Should I give in to her refusing nappies, or try and get her to wait until she can tell me when a poo is coming? I think she knows, she just never says, but we can usualy tell by her wiggly bottom.