Day 1 of potty training and I want to give up already

[Mudonstairs]

My son is 2 years and 5 months. Started trying to potty train him today. Trying the oh crap method. Took all morning to get him to behave normally as he doesn’t like having a bare bum and legs. He has basically held his wee in all day and only peed when he’s woken up from his nap. Peed a bit onto the waterproof bed protector and then finished it in the hallway and when I tried to pick him up and take him to the toilet he has laid flat on the floor kicking and screaming saying he doesn’t like the toilet. I have tried him with a potty and the toilet with a step. He doesn’t like either of them.

Is this normal? Is it supposed to feel like you are torturing them? How is this stress going to teach him good potty training skills? I’m reluctant to give it up on the first day but how long is this stubbornness going to go on for and is this going to be damaging for him? I was hoping he would at least have grasped the concept of using the potty by Christmas but with perhaps a few accidents still. I wasn’t expecting complete defiance at the mere idea of it tbh, but he is a pretty headstrong boy so I don’t know why I thought it would be any easier!

I tried potty training my son at 2.5 years old and it simply didn't work, he wasn't ready. I waited until he was 3.5 years old, we bypassed the potty and went straight to the toilet. He grasped it within a week, 2 wee accidents at pre-school and that was it. I stressed so much, mainly worrying about other Mum's judging me, for not potty training him earlier!! At the end of the day, all children are individual and they master all milestones in their own time.

Make it fun bribery can work for getting them to sit on the potty.

It's not all or nothing either and you can also get in-between pants and nappies which absorb a bit more then normal pants but not as much as a nappy.
The likelihood of dry overnight or asleep at this stage is very very different!
Use nappies overnight and when nap times, pants for everything else.
If a long journey then yes a nappy bur otherwise pants, trousers and lots of spare clothes

Update!

DH isn’t ready to give up yet. He has agreed to take on lions share of the potty training mental load while he is off work as he is better able to deal with the potty battles! I have agreed to this as we can see where we are when it’s time for us to go back to work and can always stop if we aren’t getting anywhere by then. We have decided we don’t want to go completely nappy free when leaving the house, so we are between trying training pants or maybe putting pants on him and then pull up nappy over the top.

Can anyone recommend either of those two ideas for trips out? Does anyone have any recommendations for brands of training pants if they have used them?

Bambino mio do training pants we used them with both DS's 🙂

Wait til the Easter weekend, and bin Oh Crap! I had that book and generally I love following a process but it honestly stressed me out with this. I abandoned it after 2 days of oh crap and tried again a few months later, just going by what I thought would work, stayed close to home day one, but wore clothes etc as normal, well they picked it up over the weekend.

Oh crap helped us because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, my daughter was very ready and took to it so easily at 2y4m. Tried my son at 2y6m and he just wasn’t getting it enough for it to feel like we were getting somewhere. Our whole lives became about him peeing and it was all reliant on me getting him to the potty with almost no awareness from him. I was hating it! So we stopped. Nappies back on, didn’t mention it again until he was almost 3. Got it in a week.

If you keep going he’ll get there eventually I’m sure but is it worth it? Versus taking a break and coming back to it in a few months? Honestly what’s the point - 3m can and often will make such a huge difference

I am starting to see that going back to nappies may be the answer to our problems but have agreed to give it until second week of January before we decide. That way we can say we really did give it our best shot. If we are still in exactly the same boat this time next week we will go back to nappies.

My eldest I put so much pressure on him to potty train, he got it in a week and then went back to wetting himself he just wasn't ready and didn't want to do it. I paused and about 4 weeks later we tried it again and he nailed it, but we still had occasional accidents for up to a year.

My middle, he did it in a weekend and my youngest in about a week. It honestly depends on the kid and if they're ready to potty train.

Something which helped us

• my youngest loved taking her toys to the potty, so randomly whilst we was playing I would day " oohh doggy/ teddy/ spiderman/ bluey needs a wee, let's go potty" the toy would go potty and then she would.
• I piled them with cordial, it slightly aggravates the bladder and they drank so much, which then meant we had extra practice! Even accidents are practising. I noticed with my 1st I was so burnt out of him having accidents that I didn't want to let him drink too much but that didn't help him learn.
• pants can help because the feeling of wet clothes close to your skin feels disgusting. And if they have a fav character on it helps to challenge him to keep them dry and point out when he does go potty "look spiderman is still dry, yay well done"
• make it as positive as you can! Sing, dance and cheer him on. Punishing for accidents does not work!

Good luck! He will get there eventually

Thanks. I hope so. We are giving it one last push this week and will go back to nappies if there’s no progress next week!

Strict parenting ... sit on the potty until you go (end of). Vs oh dear, if you don't want to s/hit on the potty,never mind, it's ok.

Kids going to school not able to.use the toilet is abhorrent and yes, parents need to go to school and sort out their children ... who will get the piss taken out of them

But who exactly was being trained?
Back in the day, mothers were home and watched toddlers like hawks, ready to whisk a child to a potty at the first sign that they needed to go, or children were often placed on potties at regular intervals and made to sit there until they produced a pee or poo.

And children were spanked back then too.

It wasn't all a case of watching for readiness and providing sweet and gentle encouragement. Women had cloth nappies to wash, another baby on the way who needed the nappies, or they were sick and tired of washing them and the stench of poo or piss and the nappy bucket. It was a high stakes process and the end justified the means.

I’m not sure who exactly was being trained haha! Thanks for that perspective. I guess there were a lot of ways that life was different back then.

I'm a fully cloth nappy lady and used this brand too. There are loads of brands around. Try Vinted or eBay.

@Mudonstairs you have had a right couple of weeks haven't you with Christmas in it all too!

What words would you use to describe your potty training journey so far?

It sounds like it's been difficult and has impacted on your usual life routines.

At 2 1/2 I think he's really young- all boys I know have trained at just turned 3 at the earliest and some nearer to 4.
Putting pull ups or nappies on will help you all get your mojo for life back as still fighting him with this is not good for any of you (I do understand there has been some progress).
Seriously- take the pressure off. Have nice times out at places with a pull up on, you can still offer and try for wees when out.
Try at home before bath or the times when you're at home- take the pressure off and you might find relaxing about it helps you all. I think nearer to 3 kids have more understanding about reward charts/ being a big kid/ clever kid and also body awareness's for some.

Good luck- be happy.

Hard work! Those are the words I’d use to describe it. I am honestly so conflicted about it because I feel like I’m grieving (sounds dramatic, I know) for the life we had like going out for meals at the drop of a hat or long drives and days out together. Just seems a long time before he will be potty trained enough for us to go back to these things if we are to use the oh crap method/no more nappies.

I would love not to use nappies and I do agree with the oh crap theory that any kind of nappy or pants will make him feel like he can wee or poo in them due to muscle memory, but really don’t see how it would work without a nappy. I have ordered some trousers off amazon that are for potty training, meant to be used overnight for bed wetting and they look like pyjama bottoms. They supposedly keep accidents contained and soak up and lock away liquid. I’m thinking of giving these a go for when we go out next. May make us feel like we aren’t so trapped in the house all the time and they aren’t so much ‘going backwards’ as nappies would be. Perhaps they will be the happy medium.

I do agree that at his age he doesn’t really understand the desire to be a ‘big boy’ etc and I haven’t even bothered with a reward chart because the minute I show him a sticker he doesn’t want to stick it on a chart, he wants it to hold and ends up sticking and unsticking it to random places until it’s no longer sticky 😂 it does make me wonder at all these people who trained their kids a year earlier than my boy. Does an 18 month old really understand reward charts? Maybe some do but mine had only just learned to walk at that age due to being a content bum shuffler!

We just let our child do it when they were ready I never saw the need to do some complicated training thing

I think Oh Crap is…crap. It’s one way of doing it with a really weird ‘you must get this done before 3’ insistence. It doesn’t work for everyone. I toilet trained DD using it and we were both fucking miserable and it took ages.

I left DS pretty much to his own devices and he did it when he was ready (actually younger than DD was) and super quickly.

It’s actually saying ‘you must get this done before 2.5’ actually. The author says best age for potty training is between 20-30 months and my DS is 30 months in 2 weeks.

I have found it quite eye opening that most people on here have said they trained their kids much older than this, yet the author makes it sound like my child is on the older end of the training spectrum! I do wonder at the disparity of this 🤔

This. There does seem t9 be an almost competitive impulse to insist that kids can’t be ready for things if they don’t instantly get a new skill. A sort of “be kind” thing?

Kids develop habits like adults do. A toddlers who has been wearing a nappy 24 7 is used to peeing in it and may resist change. Nothing to do with readiness, this is about habit.

What childcare do you use when you are at work?

I really feel maybe you should consider whether dh is falling into the sunken costs fallacy. Also, you talk about ds being 'stubborn' and 'defiant' but he's only 2, he's just expressing his needs. You can't have a 'power struggle' with a 2 year old who has absolutely no ability to have any power, he doesn't have the mental capacity for that. He's trying to communicate distress with the choice you're trying to force him to make, that is all. DH is the one being 'stubborn' and forcing this on you both, when really it is benefitting no one. There is no benefit to training him now rather than in a few months or even weeks when he's ready, absolutely none. The idea that you have a couple of weeks clear - so what? If he's ready it can be done in a weekend.

Just because you've started doesn't mean you need to make yourselves and him miserable to carry on. It's not a 'backwards step' to stop, it's just a sensible choice for a child who isn't ready.

This is exactly why I haven’t given up yet. Whilst it has been very stressful at times, he has made some great progress too and to completely pack it in and go totally back in nappies again would feel a bit unfair and harsh on him. Almost like saying, you are not picking this up fast enough for our liking so you’re not ready. Just want him to get a really good chance of learning and adjusting to it without making a snap decision.

I know what you mean with the Be Kind sort of approach and I actually see it as a little UNkind if we expect him to learn so much without any bumps in the road. I honestly wouldn’t have made this thread if he was happily peeing everywhere or just having accidents with some successes. For me, my concern is the distress and resistance he has displayed. He has that sort of character anyway so it’s hard for me to tell if he’s just being his usual stubborn self or if there is a real anxiety around it all. For instance, even before potty training he would resist having his nappy trained. He would have to be wrestled and coaxed and bribed into standing still or lying down in order for me to change his nappy but on we the nappy changing was underway he would be fine. So either way he would be resisting me dealing with his toileting in some form or other and once he is on the potty he is actually ok. As I said, he has quite a rebellious nature and will usually go out of his way to do the opposite of what we ask of him. All normal toddler behaviour but what I am trying to say is he isn’t the sort of kid to just do as he is told if he doesn’t want to.

Tonight before bath time with his dad he was on the potty and I overheard him saying ‘daddy daddy I did it, I did a pee pee’ he was overjoyed at his success so it seems he is getting something out of this.

We have grandparents for childcare and they will do whatever we ask them to in regards to his care, so we are lucky with this.

I will definitely go back to nappies full time if I know he is genuinely distressed and not just being stubborn. I think my use of the word stubborn is incorrect because you have taken it to mean some sort of malicious and intentional behaviour from my toddler but what I mean is that is just his nature anyway, I just don’t know how best to articulate what I mean. He is ‘spririted’ to say the least 😂

Please read my post previous to this one where I explain. He is ‘stubborn’ in just about every part of our day pretty much. All very normal at this age I am sure, terrible twos and all that! But this does make it difficult for me to differentiate whether he is genuinely finding this very distressing or whether he is just pissed off as he is not getting his way and throwing one of his tantrums (again). He throws tantrums when I change his nappy also, so should I just let him have a poo nappy on all day? Where do I draw the line? It’s really hard to tell.

The thing with distress is that a child can be distressed but it's not always the wrong thing to do. For example a child might show some distress at starting school but the right approach may well be to acknowledge the distress whilst supporting them through it rather than homeschooling.

If there is progress I understand wanting to keep going even with compromise to go out. I doubt that the mother's of the past training at 18 months were home for long periods.