I need guidance! Please tell me your success stories of potty training boys! (sorry, this is a bit long)

[MrsMerryBunnyGirlHenry]

I was all set to start potty training with DS tomorrow (age 2.4 yrs) but now I'm having serious reservations.

We first introduced the concept of a potty about 8 months ago so he's comfortable with the idea of sitting on it clothed/ naked and getting sticker rewards for sitting on it. He's never done a wee or poo in it (except for me catching the odd wee and applauding wildly ), though he knows what potties are for.

A few weeks ago he was staying dry for half the night on a regular basis, though it looks as though this has now stopped. However, a combination of dry half-nights plus Easter hols (10 days at home) made me think this would be the ideal time to focus on training him properly.

Yesterday I gave him a 'Thomas Potty' - brand new cheapo potty decorated with stickers of Thomas and James, etc. I also decorated his first potty with ITNG stickers. He loves them both. We have a loo seat for him, which I'll put more stickers on tonight. He also adores his Thomas pants, which we bought this week.

The problem is that he is very anti the idea of wearing pants, and when I suggest this he says 'I don't want to wear pants: I love nappies'. He's also become more reluctant to sit bare-bottomed on the potty. For the last two nights I've slipped his pants on with his pyjama trousers, then showed him the pants afterwards and he was positive about wearing them under those circumstances. However I feel that since he's expressed such strong feelings in the last few weeks, it could be very counter-productive for me to enforce potty training at this stage.

What I'd love is to leave it another 6 months or more even, and then find that he is ready and expresses a desire to use the potty or toilet or to wear pants, of his own volition. I'm sure that being around potty-trained children will help spur him on - all of his classmates wear nappies AFAIK. Has this been your experience? Has anyone found that their child has had fewer accidents because they trained them later?

I can only tell you my experience with DS who is 3 this month. I tried to potty train him at 2.5 without success and had 3 horrendous days at home where he just wasnt getting it.

I did the same as you - his own stickers on potty, he chose his own big boy pants etc etc. It just didn't work.

I left it a couple of months and tried again but he still wasn't ready.

He decided himself at 2.9 months that he wanted to wear big boy pants and was doing quite well on the wee front. He still always does a poo in his pants but I believe this is quite common especially with boys - he runs away to do it and hides.

We then started to have a quite a few wee accidents but I think this was because I was (finally) reacting to him and he picked up on it. I realised what he was doing when he started asking if I was happy or sad when he had an accident.

I quickly changed and when having accidents I didn't attach any emotion, just said lets clean this up then we can go and play. In the last couple of weeks he has completely clicked and takes himself off for a wee.

I would say be led by your child - go at his own pace.

(Also smarties and chocolate buttons as bribes seem to work!)

chocolate buttons worked for me with DS1 when he was 26 months old. He had thomas pants and a motorbike potty to encourage him. He couldn't tell me he was weeing before training - so the first 3 days were accident filled while he learnt.

But, if you and he both want to leave it a while surely you may as well wait a few months?

Leave it and wait a few months.

So glad to have you all confirming what my instinct was telling me!

Like the choccy idea - DS will love this when we finally potty train - he so rarely gets chocolate in this household that he'll think it's Xmas and his birthday in one!

my mum poo-trained my ds aged 2.5 with the simple method of putting the potty in front of the telly

we were sort of in the middle of training and he kinda knew what the plan was but was afraid to "let go" or something

anyway he was too absorbed to notice what was going on and after a couple of days of doing it this way it all went normally, in the loo, a few accidents but pretty straightforward.. she just got him over the mental block

Great telly tip! I'll give training a miss for now but I will definitely remember that chocolates and telly are the way forward!