what are the basics for potty training?

[Holymoly321]

Have no idea what to do so any help would be great.

Hi there - not an expert as DS 3.4 is not yet trained but I have read lots of books and threads on the subject

Preparation stage: buy a potty, talk about what it is for, read a story book about potty training, let them practice sitting on it, take them to the loo with you for demonstrations, buy some exciting pants, sit teddy on the potty, sit dc on the potty at nappy change and bath time

There are various schools of thought but all say wait until the child is ready - defined in different ways, - can say when they need to go, can say when they have been, can undress, aged at least 18 months, can follow instructions and concentrate on one thing of a reasonable length of time,

1. boot camp aka Gina Ford (quite a good little book) Stay at home for a few days - straight to pants potty every 15 min for the first day (yes really!) bribes for successes, never mind type noises for accidents and it should all be sorted in a week

1. gently gently approach, the no cry potty training solution - keep nappies on but encourage dc to use the potty when they need to go - use pull ups. Generally this method is frowned on on MN - confusing.

1. Child led potty training - wait until the child says - I don't want to wear nappies any more mummy. say - ok then and buy them some pants. Apparently this method has instant sucess but you do have to wait and it might be until dc is nearly 4 (but I know at least one just 2 year old who did it this way).

I quite like the NCT potty training book too.

Personally I would wait until dc is showing enthusiasm and has weed on the potty or toilet purposefully a few times - save yourself too much in the way of puddles and misery.

Good luck

hi
agree with your last message, but here's what worked for us...
prob the most useful thing was to keep at it-a bit of advice i read in a supernanny book!
we would come up with all sorts of excuses, like weekends away, but in the end we stuck at it and it worked!
the other amazingly useful bit of kit was the travel potty-on our first trip into town i used it about 4 times-in h and m, at the train station...
you can get it out in seconds and discretly get you little one to perform wherever you are!the little absorbant bags mean you can tie up a big bag of wee til u find a bin and arent walking round town with a potty full!
have a go in the summer months when you can do more washing and your child is wearing less!
lastly, try and relax! dont expect miracles overnight. we tried with our little girl when she had just turned 2 and she was great. we're now going to start nighttimes (she's just turned 3)
good luck!!

Give your child every opportunity to use the potty/toilet from 12-18 months onwards - so have potty around, let them see you using the toilet, talk about wee and poo etc. Let them have nappy off time regularly, and work up from 10 minutes to longer and longer times as you are confident that they'll make the potty.

This worked beautifully for us - DS went into pants the week after he was 2, and we never had to do the potty every 15 minutes sort of thing