I just wanted the benefits of others' experience on this one. My son is currently 2 years 10 months old.
In the summer I tried leaving him nappy free just to see what he'd make of it and he freaked out, so I backed off. Then a few months later he chose a potty and pants just so we'd have the stuff for when he was ready for potty training. By about September we moved on to me asking him to sit on the potty morning (before I put his clothes on) and evening (before bath). Once we had successes in the potty we moved onto bare bum breakfast with no accidents so about the beginning of October (2.8) we moved onto pants.
Obviously had a few accidents in the first week, which I expected. Since then, he has no accidents at all as long as I am psychic and make him sit on the potty when he needs to go. He's only told me once in 2 months that he needed a wee. If you ask him he'll always say that he doesn't need to go even if he's grabbing his crotch. Sometimes he sneaks off to do it. At first he would say if he had an accident but lately he's just ignored it, like he would if he was wearing a nappy.
With weeing, it's generally not that hard to avoid accidents, as I know when I give him drinks so I know when he's likely to need to go. With pooing it's much harder to predict, when he had a nappy he used to go quite a lot, usually about 1-2 times per day, sometimes more as he loves fruit and veg But these days he's often going 2-3 days between poos so he's holding it even if it's subconscious. Sometimes he'll be breaking wind so you get warning that it's imminent, sometimes he'll go off and hide and do it, if he's occupied with something he'll just sit there and poo himself. Other times he'll do one in the morning in his night time nappy before I get him out of his room.
When he was wearing nappies having a dirty nappy never bothered him at all, he'd never tell you to change it etc, and there were a few times that he got sore because I had a cold and didn't realise he'd pooed for a while, so he's not a child that by nature objects to being wet or dirty.
I think he just sees using the potty or toilet as a chore taking up his time really, he does it when I ask him but left to his own devices he just does it in his clothes.
The HV said that he was young to be potty trained and maybe I should put him back in nappies but he has so few accidents that I'm reluctant to do that. I'm not sure how that would help us move on from him being happy to sit in it.
So what I'd like are some ideas on how I could best motivate him to tell me when he needs to go rather than just do it in his clothes. I would welcome any suggestions. Sorry for such a long post but I wanted to explain it properly