What do you do on day 1?

[babybaby444]

This may sound silly but here goes! My little boy is 2.5 and I'm going to start potty training but not sure where to start?

Going to try the bare from waist down approach but what do I say to him on day 1? And do I basically ask him to sit on the potty every half hour or so and then if he has an accident between that time be calm and say like 'oh dear, next time let's try to get it in the potty' or similar? Obviously if he looks like he's going to go encourage him there straight away.

We've had a potty out for a while but he's never really shown any interest in it, or sat on it for more than a few seconds!

Is the bare bottom idea basically to get them to understand how to feel the need to go to the toilet?

We've had a potty out for a while but he's never really shown any interest in it, or sat on it for more than a few seconds!

He's not ready then. You need to wait until he has used it before you do the stay at home bear bottom thing. Every day keep offering him the potty once he has actually used it then it's time.

I’m following with interest. DS seems to be showing a lot of interest in the potty, asking for nappy changes, telling me before he’s done a poo that he needs one. He’s done 1 wee on the potty but I’m heavily pregnant so haven’t been encouraging him too much as I don’t have the enthusiasm right now. He asked for it this morning but then nothing.

@DontBePassiveAggresive - I disagree. I potty trained both of my children at 2 yrs when neither of them had shown any interest in using a potty or even asking to have a nappy change. The key thing for me was noticing that their nappies were dry for longer periods of time then suddenly very wet (showing that they were holding and voiding larger volumes of urine, rather than lots of little wees).

OP - we just spent day one bare bummed and in close proximity to the potty (in the kitchen-diner as we had lino there rather than carpet ). There will be accidents (lots!) for the first few hours but they soon start to associate the feeling of needing to go with the process of actually going. We asked them to sit on the potty if they looked like they were needing to go (dancing around / holding their bits) or if they hadn't been for a while.

By day two we had more successes than failures and by day three we even left the house (just to the park). By day 4 the potty was in the bathroom as they could ask with enough notice to get there on time.

Both were trained by the end of the week (still in nappies for naps and overnight initially but out of nappies for naps within a couple of weeks and both were dry at night by 2.5 years).

My experience was almost identical to libraryquery. One child was 21 months and one was 26 months as we timed it for the holidays. The only other thing was we never went back to nappies during the day so they didn’t get confused and for naps/bedtime we put the nappy on in their cot and took it off when they woke up and they were still in their cot. Really strict that they know the nappy isn’t for any time other than sleeping.

Good luck!

Thank you @libraryquery and @ThePoint678

That's a great help and gives me hope! Yes definitely sticking with no nappies in the day and just at night!