How to potty train with an unpredictable weeing pattern

[StacieBenson]

How on earth are you meant to potty train when your child's pee schedule is all over the place? Today he seems to be doing lots of little pees every hour but yesterday he was peeing every two hours. Help!

Bump

How old are they? I focused on them understanding how their body felt when they needed a wee rather than timings.

Pee schedule? I’ve never heard of that before! I’ve just waited until they show signs of being ready, have a potty out and let them get used to it being around. You can’t force it and you definitely can’t do it before they’re ready. Sometimes they seem ready, start potty training and then change their mind. Just relax, it’ll happen naturally

Just turned 3, so we're quite late, but I wanted his grommets operation done before we started. How on earth do you get them to understand the pee feeling?

When he is ready he will understand that he is peeing, he will feel that he has a full bladder and have control over it coming out. He might not be ready - being three doesn’t automatically mean he is. How’s his communication? Does he understand conversations about it?

Communication isn't great after protracted glue ear. He is interested and comfortable with the potty but I think his wees take him by surprise.

It’ll happen organically, don’t stress. If you want in person help you can contact a health visitor, or pop into your local children centre?

If you pop a pair of pants on him with a nappy on over the top, he will start to recognise the wet feeling with the sensation of needing a week. The trouble with modern nappies is the take the moisture away so quickly children dont make the connection between being wet and needing the toilet.

We used the Oh Crap! method, having first read the whole book. It is written in a slightly 'I'm right and everyone else is stupid' style which some people hate, but the method itself is reasonably convincing and might help with your specific issue. Basically it's about you first watching the child really carefully so that you recognise when their body is signalling they're about to pee, and then you get them on the potty straight away each time. This helps the child to then learn to recognise their body's signals themselves.

Another thing that's worth knowing is that once potty training is underway, most children will start to save up their little pees into one big one. If they're used to not thinking about it in a nappy then they just let the wee dribble out without really noticing it, but once they're going to the toilet they are more intentional about it. This happened really quickly with DS1 - he did about 12 wees in the first hour when we started training him, but by day 2 he was doing a massive wee every few hours.

I don't think anyone has a pee schedule do they? 😂

It's just a case of sitting on the potty at regular intervals to begin with and lots of praise if a pee or poop happens.

Over time he will learn to feel when he needs to go. I always left the potty accessible and put them in clothes they could manage themselves so they could just go to the potty rather than need to say they needed to go and need help.