DS2, 19 months and suddenly very interested

[BigWeeHag]

which is total madness as DS1 is nearly 5 and not reliable yet!

So, he takes off his nappy, takes himself to the toilet, points willy in general direction, grunts (it's hilarious) then washes his hands. So we are missing only the vital step of actually doing the wee!

I realise he's only copying DS1 but any advice on how to get him to use the loo while he's doing all this?

Oh, how harsh that no one answered you!

And interesting for me as my DS (nearly 5) is not reliable yet, but my DD (nearly 19 months) is requesting a 'wee wee' and 'ba-poo' a few times a day and then doing the business on the potty.

She had a week or so of doing what your DS2 does (well, generally feigning), then toddling off to pee in a corner or similar. So I gesticulated a bit ("That wee-wee on the floor - please do it in the potty!") and then made an almighty fuss when she did finally do it.

I am bemused by the difference in my children.

Oh I think you're both discovering the window of opportunity for potty training. 19 months is a wonderful age for this: mimicking, but not yet wilful. Just encourage them to keep at it and one day with timing BigWeeHag, it will happen and he'll put two and two together. First thing in the morning/after a nap is a great time.

My experience hasn't been that great. But DS doesn't have an older sibling, so could be completely different.

DS showed all the same signs as yours at 19 months. Nursery was really keen to potty train him so we started, thinking it was going to be easy.

6 months on and he's still nowhere near being reliable. He has one or two weeks with no accidents, followed by quite a few weeks of bad accidents. But on average he would have minor accidents (wet patch on his pants) before announcing that he needs to wee. We've tolerated it until recently when he had tummy problems and been poo-ing in his pants quite a bit the last few weeks, so we're once again thinking of calling it quits. But whenever we think of putting him back in nappies, he suddenly goes through a brilliant week of no accident whatsoever. I'm sure he knows because DH and I start talking about nappies, as he would out of the blue say "Nappies.. don't like it". So it sounds as though whenever he's threatened with nappies, he would suddenly become great with potty training.

I think if I had a chance to re-do it, I would either have done EC or waited till at least 2.5years.

I've just been browsing threads looking for wisdom on this - dd didn't potty train until 2.8 after a failed attempt at 2.5. ds at 22 months often takes himself off to sit on the potty saying "wee-wee" and sometimes tries to take his trousers/nappy off too. Just copying or might he actually be able to tell he needs a wee?

He can definitely tell he needs a wee, but not necessarily every time. However, if you don't let him try, how will he get better? He is definitely in the dramatic play/mimicking stage, so why not take advantage?