Currently nearly 2 weeks in to our second attempt at potty training our daughter. We tried just as she turned 2, gave it a good go but she wasn't ready. She's nearly 2.5 now and we are trying again and I'm just feeling so frustrated with it all.
I'd say that on the whole we're having more success this time around, as in she definitely understands more and has more capability and better communication, but some days it really feels like we're going backwards. She knows how to go to the toilet. She can pull her pants up and down and with help gets on the toilet and knows how to go. She often tells us she needs to go to the toilet which is great, but a lot of the time she will have already had an accident in her pants by this point, or she'll start doing it before we get to the loo. I know this is normal but wondering when she will get to the stage of asking to go before she's desperate or has already done it.
She has a potty downstairs which we encourage her to use but 9 times out of 10 refuses to use it and wants to go upstairs to the 'big toilet'. She also does not want any help at all with going. So she'll say she needs to go but if I then try to take her she gets annoyed and then refuses to go and goes in her pants instead. She's like this in other aspects as well, wants to do something by herself and will lose all interest in doing it the second you try to help. She wants you to let her go upstairs on her own and do it all by herself. But she can't, she needs help getting on and she takes too long to get there herself. We do have a step but she still needs help getting on. So what ends up happening is she says she needs to go, literally tells me to stay downstairs(!), then when she gets to the toilet and can't get on properly she shouts for help but by that point has usually already had an accident.
Today has been particularly bad. She had 3 accidents within about 30 minutes and each time I calmly explained not to wee in pants but to tell mammy when she needs the toilet. She seemed to just not care that she was weeing in her pants today, when normally she would at least say afterwards that she'd done it, agree to go to the toilet in case she's not finished, and want to get clean pants on after. She just was not bothered at all today and getting her to put clean pants on was a battle.
Asking her if she needs the toilet doesn't seem to work, she says no every single time. If you suggest she goes, rather than ask if she needs to, she just says she'll go later and refuses to try. If you pick her up and take her she kicks and screams and will not sit on the toilet. She doesn't seem to care about rewards for going. The only way to get her to go is if she wants to herself, otherwise it's a massive battle. I can count on one hand the number of times I've suggested she goes to the toilet and she's actually agreed to (apart from after having an accident when she usually agrees to sit on the toilet afterwards)
I'm getting so stressed with it and I feel like it's not a case of her not being ready any more so I really don't want to go back to nappies. (Also it was getting to the point with nappies where every change was a huge battle as she would run away, kick and scream and make it extremely difficult to change her every time and I can't face going back to that! In fact that's the main thing that prompted us to try when she was just turned 2, so it's been like this a good while now!)
It also doesn't help that everybody around me seems to have had little trouble potty training their kids, with most saying they've had it done and dusted pretty much over a long weekend or similar.
I think we probably just need to soldier on.
I don't even know what advice I want here I think I just needed to have a bit of a rant so thank you to anybody who has actually read this!