Potty training a "no" child

[Horowitz89]

My 2.5 year old (30 months) is beautiful, wonderful etc, but he can be hard work as he is very strong-willed. He is the type of child that just says "no" and can get very upset when you don't follow his desires. We have regular battles (eg on going in the pram to nursery, teeth brushing etc.) My approach to this is to try to be firm when it's important (eg on teeth brushing) and flexible where I can be to not have unnecessary battles (eg we can walk to nursery if we have time.) I probably give into sometimes when I shouldn't (eg an extra story at bedtime) snd in the last 6 months we have a) moved house and b) had our second child, so we have been a bit indulgent maybe with our toddler, but I do believe in boundaries, saying no etc.

We decided to potty train this long weekend. He had intermittently weed on a potty but had never shown much interest. I was dreading it because I thought it would just bring out his stubbornness and he would just say no to it. We are following Oh Crap method which is naked day 1, and he took to it completely- saying when he needed a wee, taking himself off to do it himself, and doing 3 absolutely massive poos. He was so proud of himself. Knowing that he likes to be independent, we told him this was about doing thing "all by himself" and he loved that and would repeat it when looking lovingly at a massive turd.

But it all went off the rails today when we added clothes. Will not engage with it at all- won't listen to us saying he should sit on the potty, has an accident, then we have a big battle over sitting on the potty and changing trousers. Was very emotional and pushed every boundary going. I think he was so motivated by doing it by himself that asking us for help with trousers is beyond him. (Wish I had realised that pushing down trousers was a key skill a few months ago!)

Feel like future is either bribery (chocolate buttons for successful potty trips) or (and I know it sounds mean) embarrassment when he has an accident in front of friends or at nursery. I also accept that on some level there's not much I can do beyond being consistent and waiting for it all to click with him. But worried I have raised a child that I have zero ability to get to sit on a potty for 5 seconds!

TL:dr looking for tips and advice on potty training strong-willed children/ having strong-willed children who don't turn into teenage nightmares.

You cannot decide it’s time to potty train.
being dry is similar learning to walk. And if you said “ this weekend we are teaching little Johnny( age 11mo) to walk” there would be uproar at your abusive parenting.
and obvs you would not do that and would just wait until they were ready and then support them.

potty training is no different.

waiting until your child is ready works best. Ime and that of my friends.

what helped my first child was a nursery where they had little toilets in the baby change area and it was Montessori. So he wanted to be like them.
he trained himself at around 2yo.

he is / was also a child who would do what he wanted when he wanted and didn’t like to be told what to do. He would resist my attempts to control him!!

however. Potty training was simple. He saw it. Wanted to do that. So he did.

strongly recommend this approach for an easier life.

best of luck

2.5 is very young. Let him go at his own pace with it. And.... toddlers do not care if their friends pee their pants or whatnot.

Wait until they are ready. DS has always been like this and things do just click and it clicks straight away.

2.5 is on the young side nowadays give it another few months

We did it in 3 days when she was just turning 3. Similar temperament child, very strong willed. She wouldn’t have been ready at 2.5. However, a friend of mine (we both did Oh Crap) advised not to do naked from the waist down and I’m so glad we didn’t. Went straight into pants and trousers. Otherwise you have to train them twice! Once to potty train while naked and another to potty train with clothes on! So it just prolongs it and creates more confusion. We also made sure to go to the library and pick up lots of books for her about potty training and how great it was and also had a sticker reward chart, which she bloody loved and glowed with pride every time she got to do a sticker. Oh and we set a timer every 10 mins to sit on the potty. And there were a lot of “no!”s but then we just removed everything of interest until she agreed. But we tried not to make it a stand off. Just a simple “oh dear, if you don’t go on the potty, you can’t play with x”. We also found that asking her to show her toys how great she was at going on the potty really worked too. And clapping and cheering like a complete fanatic every time she was successful, her little face lit up! And when she had an accident, the key was always to make getting her changed and clean take AGES. Like make her stand there while we slowly went to get change of clothes etc so she understood it was way quicker and easier just to use the potty than wet herself. It’s mentally exhausting for the parents to behave so wildly all day but it was so worth it to get it done in just 3 days.

I wouldn’t go down the shame method as he’ll probably just withdraw and associate it with bad things. I wouldn’t rule out using smarties or whatever either, we used them when out and about as a “high stakes” reward and she certainly didn’t care once we removed them.

And if it all goes to hell just give it a break and start again! No harm in it when he’s so little. Like pp said, a lot of the time it’s about them being ready, rather than forcing it on them.

We followed that book when DS was just under 2.5 and tbh the day we added clothes was also a disaster. I probably would have given up but DH kept the faith and a few days later DS got it. It took a bit longer than the book suggests to move through the blocks and he had a lot of accidents at first, but day 2/3 was absolutely awful and then it all got better as it clicked into place. I think from memory the book addresses that as normal as they realise it’s not just a fun new game etc but it’s not going away and it’s effort! Good luck!!

Thanks everyone! After being in the deaths of despair last night we've had a much better day. He did a mixture of.telling us who he needed a wee and accepting our prompts to sit down and we didn't have any accidents.... until a massive poo at the very end of the day caught us all off guard! But feels like food progress and most importantly he was broadly happy today whereas yesterday was very emotional and upset. Who knows what tomorrow will bring but feeling better than last night.

For anyone who is interested, we have done a little bit of "if you sit on the potty you can watch TV while you try" and then also started giving him a sticker snd a high 5 after every pee in the potty. He also started the day saying "I can't do it" when we talked about the potty so made a big effort to repeat "see, you can do it" every time he peed.