half way there, but others won't help!

[ditziness]

i'm not sure what to do!

Little boy is 2 and a bit and has always used cloth nappies as i don't like disposables, and has been using the potty for almost a year now for poos. the last couple of months he's been interested in using it for wees too. A couple of weeks ago he started showing an interest in pants, so i bit the bullet and decided to stop nappies and start proper pants in the house and training pants outside.

He's perfect in the house, no accidents atall, everything in the potty. if we go out he's more hit and miss so i've been using training pants. He's getting htere though yesterday asked me to take him to the toilet when we were in a cafe! i figure he's going to have some accidents, but this is ok and will help him learn. it's summer, it dries.

Trouble is everyone else is just putting him in disposable pull ups! He gets looked after by nursery a day a week, a friend a day a week and goes to his grandparents regularly. and they all just put him in pullups as soon as he has an accident! to me this seems such a backward step. yes, they may look abit like pants, but they are a disposbale nappy and he's never worn them in his life. How is wearing disposbales going to help him potty train. I don't want to force the issue because i usually just accept that people care for him differently. But this is pissing me off

Advice?

Actually, I think you should be a bit more assertive about the pull-ups. People use them because they can't be bothered to clean up accidents, don't want to interrupt their phone call for an urgent potty dash, and so makes their own lives easier. It would be better for you if they just admitted that they didn't want wee all over their new carpet etc. In light of how well DS is doing, it would be a backward step.

I am appalled by the nursery though. I thought they were supposed to enable the children in their care to become independent, not make their own lives easier. My sons' nursery wouldn't accept pull-ups or training pants when potty training the DC, they would only put a nappy/pull-up on a child who'd had diarrhoea and was waiting to go home. You are right to think it will cause confusion, and your DS may even conclude that everyone would rather he used nappies/pull-ups than the potty. I think you can be more insistent with nursery.

The thing is, you may have to look into alternative childcare if you can't convince any of them to stop using pull-ups. I think a little emotional leverage with the grandparents might work along the lines of "if you can't respect my wishes in this matter, I will have to find alternative childcare which would be a shame, as you will see so much less of DS as a result." If the grandparents are DP's parents, get him to have a word with them. You shouldn't have to be the baddie in all this.