So, I am after advice really on potty training. I’ve seen so much in the media recently about leaving it too late and the parents are in a rush to do it before they start school and then don’t always manage it. My own Mum comments how my brother was potty trained by 18 months and other older relatives seem to think 18m-2yrs is when it should happen.
After hearing all this, I’m keen to not leave it too late to get my DS potty trained. He is turning 2 in a month so I know I have time. However, he’s showing signs he’s ready:
- pulls at his nappy (we use pull ups) regularly when he’s been
- Often shows me when it’s full, points and says “oh no!” We haven’t shown him to do this he just randomly started it
- If we ask him “have you had a wee/poo” he will nod or shake his head and sometimes will even just grab my hand and take me to his changing caddy when he needs changing
- Goes through phases of absolutely not wanting a nappy on and when we leave it off he can be dry for up to 2 hours
- There was a time recently when we’d left his nappy off and I was in the bathroom cleaning my teeth - bathroom is right at the top of the stairs so we have a baby gate separating it from the bedrooms. DS came to the gate and starting whinging at me. I assumed he wanted to be downstairs so I said “give mummy two minutes to clean her teeth and we’ll go down”. He then started sobbing and when I looked he’d weed all over the carpet. I genuinely think he was coming to tell me he needed a wee and I’d ignored it so he’d wet himself and got really upset (obviously I had no idea at the time as he’d never done it before)
This was just over 5 weeks ago and so after all this I got a potty and put it in the living room to get him used to it. We also got him the potty training pull ups which make him feel wet for a while after he goes. We showed him he had to sit on the potty and he immediately started doing it with his clothes on and loved us cheering him on and high fiving when he did it. We read potty training books, but I think he’s a bit little to understand yet and just wants to read about his trains instead.
So all going ok. I wouldn’t say we’d began potty training but we were definitely gearing up to giving it a proper go.
Problems started when we moved on to encouraging him to take his pants down to sit on the potty. I’m confident if we can get him to wee on it once and make a big fuss over how well he’s done he’ll be wanting to do it again. He just will not pull his pants down or let us do it. When he’s been already nappy free we’ve tried to encourage it as well. But every time he has an absolute screaming tantrum the moment we take him near the potty so we just stop and back off as I don’t want him to start to see it as something negative. His nursery tried as well but they had the same problem. He’s absolutely fine having his pull up taken off when it’s for a nappy change, it’s just when it’s in relation to the potty. So we’ve decided to leave it for a while and revisit.
I know he’s only just turning 2 but any advice on how to get him to happily sit on the potty without a nappy on will be greatly appreciated! Or is it something that will just happen eventually? We were hoping to really start potty training over Easter weekend but I’m now not doing it as I’m not spending 4 days reducing my toddler to tears over sitting on a potty.