Should I persevere with potty training or take a break?

[Eemotinal]

Hi,

My 33 month old son showed signs of potty training a month or 2 ago, unfortunately I was not in a position to potty train at that time.

I'm now trying to potty train him, on day 4, but he has absolutely no interest, if I sit him on it (take his pants down and sit with him whilst he's on it) he goes sometimes and we clap, cheer and make a big deal out of it and he says yay and claps himself, but if he needs to go he'll have an accident which I clean up and say "oh no it was meant to go in the potty but it's okay". He stops playing to wee but makes no effort to use the potty. He has a toilet seat that connects to the big toilet and he'll independently put it on and sit on for about 10 seconds before jumping off.

We've tried giving a reward after he's gone on the potty but how do I get him to show more interest?

Do I give him a break and try again if he gets interest back or pereservere?

I wouldn’t give up on day 4 personally. IME there seems to be no progress and all of a sudden they just get it. This would rarely happen within 4 days.

I realise it’s a total ballache but I think if you give up now all this effort so far would have been for nothing.

Agree with the previous poster - at this stage, keep going. It'll click soon, I'm sure.

I wouldn't give up, most children aren't that interested in potty training after the initial excitement wears off.. It's not exactly overly fun for them to stop playing constantly and have to go to the toilet, think they'd all rather use a nappy.

Potty training is very up and down, keep going!

Give up on the potty and go straight to the toilet. My eldest took forever to potty train then we realised she didn't see it as a place to go because no one else used anything like that. We encouraged her to use the toilet and it took a week. The same approach worked with my other 2 later on.

Keep at it, it will come. Try not to find it too stressful (easier said than done) and remember it usually takes a lot of effort on the parents' part, this is normal.

Ive had three kids and they all got it with varying degrees of hardship (the hardest was definitely my son as opposed to my daughters). One thing they were all decided on though was they hated the potty. So I trained them all on the loo with a kiddy seat and step stool. This also saved me the gross job of having to empty the potty. If you haven't already, maybe try that.

good luck! It will happen sooner or later

Against the crowd but I’d wait
we did it at 3.5 years old, not joking, we did successful wees within a day. He never wet himself. Never has
he pooped himself once as he didn’t make it in time
Children need to be ready, not conform to what society thinks

Thank you all, I'll keep trying for now. I live in Wales and they start school the term after they turn 3 and want them to be toilet trained before they go.

Bribery! A mini marshmallow for every wee. Maybe something like a chocolate button for a poo. Bribery always works 😆 we tried sticker sheets and that didn’t cut it one bit.
ask them every 30 mins do they need a wee. Drink a bit more perhaps to make wees more common. Do something special eg smoothies.

Totally agree! We potty trained our boys at a similar age, in both cases when they decided that they were ready. One had no accidents whatsoever, the other had none after day 2. There's so much pressure to potty train earlier, but from what I've seen a lot of kids that potty train early have multiple accidents and take many weeks or months to be fully dry in the day.

I would keep going. With my youngest I tried at 26month 27months 30 months…this one was the most annoying, 2 weeks I went, she didn’t do a single wee in the potty, but at most only one accident all day! She started refusing liquids and would hold it until her night time nappy! She could talk well, her understanding was there, but she was very clear, she just didn’t want to!
I tried again at 34 months. It started the same, wouldn’t even entertain the potty all the toilet, not one success! However on day 5 it was like she gave in! That afternoon she suddenly started to do it! She is now 39 months and I would say she has only had 2 accidents since that day, even that was when she was poorly!
Sometimes it feels it will never happen, but it will, when the are prepared to agree to it 😂.