When do you start potty training?

[mrsflux]

Friends from antenatal have started talking about doing this soon. They've even bought potties for thier dd!
Ds is the youngest of the bunch at 15mo. Their girls are about 16mo.
Is it really time to start this early?
Can't imagine doing it with ds yet- only info we get about poops etc is the smell or the grunting!

When do you start?

I'm no expert on this because we haven't done it yet, but dd is 2.2 and I'm only just starting to wonder if she's approaching readiness.

She is sometimes asking to go on the toilet/potty (although doesn't do anything when she does go on the potty) and is able to tell me that she has done a poo or is about to do a wee. I think I'm still going to wait a bit longer until she's properly ready.

I started when dd1 took interest. She first showed interest in what we were doing on the loo at 2 yrs and then a week later totally forgot about it. At 2.5yo she developed a keener interest and I put her on the potty. It took about 3 days and 1 accident.

dd2 is 21 mos old and while the potty are in the bathrooms and she sits on them (nappy on) while I sit on the loo. If I suggest to her we take off her nappy to sit on it she says nnnnoooo!

Start too early and it is like trying to teach a pig to sing. You waste your time and annoy the pig.

When they say 'I want to do a poo on the potty/toilet'

(DS is 2.7 and just starting to get the idea)

We got a potty at about 18mo because DS was very interested in us going to the toilet. He would sit on it when we took his nappy off and had naked time before bath. Interest waned after a few weeks and has come back and waned several times since. Finally at 2.3 I think we are getting close to being ready for potty training now.

Get one by all means - nothing wrong with having one in the house - but only if your DS is interested in the whole toilet thing first. And then don't push it. Just let him explore the potty and talk about it at his own pace, and don't be worried if he ignores it for months at a time.

Each child is different and there are many ways to approach potty training.

"When they say 'I want to do a poo on the potty/toilet'"

This way may work for many children, but there are children who are sooo damn lazy that they would wear pull ups for the rest of their lives.

It does no harm to have a potty, in fact we have one for our 14 month old. We just don't expect mircles.

where did I say anything about pull-ups. This is MN, surely you know they're the work of the devil?

i have a 2 year old and she wants to sit on the potty but then gets up and does it on the floor so im going to wait. but i will try again next week but eldest was nearly 3

When they show awareness/interest, but there's no harm in drumming up a bit of interest by doing things like getting some underwear, putting it in the drawer and occasionally picking it up casually and saying "oh look, here's the underwear that you're going to be able to wear when you stop wearing nappies" etc.

take5, DD would do that, and it helped to hold her hand when she was on the potty and tell her it was OK. She needed a bit of helping through it.

Our dd was 2.4 when she first started showing an interest in getting out of nappies. We got the whole kit and kaboodle, special seat for the toilet, step and fancy pants potty. She refused to sit on the pot, declined the special insert seat and point blank ignored the step. A couple of experiences of having her skinny bum fall down the toilet convinced her that sitting on the edge was the way to go. she never ever ever used the pot to either pee or poo and was clean in a couple of days. I think the inducement of big girl knickers was the key TBH. OP, don't try to judge yourself or your child against anyone else. All children, and parents for that matter are different. I have to say the day you buy what you know will be your last packet of nappies is a brilliant one

After pressure from my mother I took a weeks holiday from work to potty train DD at 22 months old, well what a waste of a week off. Not daring to leave the house all week I abandoned the attempt on the Friday morning. 4 months later with DD regularly asking to go to the toilet, I tried again over a bank holiday weekend. She wet her knickers straight away, I changes her and she's been dry ever since.
However my nephew wasn't dry until the day he started nursery at 3.