Potty training slowly

[Iggly]

Hi

DS is 15 months and starting to show an awareness of wees and poos (not actually telling us beforehand - well I don't think so - more afterwards). Sometimes he does sit on his changing mat with a nappy - not sure if he wants us to change him as he won't have done a poo. When his nappy is off and we say are you going to do a wee, he'll squat and wee (could be coincidence though).

Anyway, I'm thinking of having potties around for him to play with and get used to sitting on but not making a big deal. Also encouraging DH to let him in the toilet when he's going (and me too), so he sees us in action.

I really don't fancy taking a cold turkey approach when he's older - am hoping for a gently intro starting now.

Has anyone got any experience they can share?

Bumping with no shame

Hi Iggly
With my first son we started putting him on the toilet (just holding him on) from 10 months as he always did a poo just before a bath. By 16 months he v rarely had a dirty nappy but we didn't even attempt wees until he was two. He got chicken pox so we stayed in and just went for it. He was completely potty trained by 2.2 months. I started using the feel and learn pull up pants with him so he understood the wet feeling and then went into pants. I made the mistake of using pull ups in the car and at naptime which when someone pointed out to me to stop, then we made much quicker progress. It is harder doing it slowly slowly but we got there earlier than a lot of his friends (not that it is a race but just saying we started earlier it took longer!)

Thanks Jules. I've ordered a seat so he can sit on the loo. We've also been taking him into the loo with us as he's one for copying! We told him that he could wee on his potty and he keeps standing in it

We took the veeeerrry slowly approach with DD, who was potty trained day and night by 24 months I think (she's now 2.5).

I think we first got some potties at about 18 months as she seemed to be interested in wees and poos. We very very gently enouraged her to maybe sit on the potty before her bath, and just had it around in order to normalise it. We had absolutely no expectations (ie we weren't aiming to train her by a certain age).

DD has always seem me and DH go to the loo as she used to follow us about like a limpet!

Eventually she did some wees in the potty and we basically just encouraged that, and lengthened the time that she was without her nappy at home, until we were confident that she would manage a trip to the local playgroup without a nappy, gradually extending the outside trips we did with her in pants.

We never had a potette or anything and only did trips once we were fairly confident there wouldn't be any accidents. No cold turkey here either. No reward charts, chocolate button rewards, basically didn't make that big a deal of it. And actually we did have hardly any accidents.

Somehow she was dry at night about 2 weeks after being dry during the day.

This isn't a particular book's method btw, just what seemed to suit us and DD and was made up as we went along by me and DH, following DD's lead.

I have to say that she was the first out of her group of my antenatal friends' babies to be potty trained (by quite some months). Quite a few of them still aren't trained at 2.5. So I can either feel very smug about our amazing technique, or it might just be that DD is just the kind of child who took to it easily and we were very lucky, and DC2 (current in utero!) might be a whole nother ball game!

I think as long as you enter into it with no expectations, there can't be any harm in having a potty in the house and starting the process off.

Good luck !