Well, we finally have a potty trained little one in our house. It took a few months and one long weekend to get it to stick, but we are pretty much trained now. We tried a few months ago, but failed and went back to the drawing board. LeLe is almost 2 and a half and starts pre-school in the fall and while they do not require her to be potty trained, they do not allow cloth diapers, which meant that we would have to start buying disposables and that seemed like a waste of money for us. So instead, we did a gradual training process.
I tried the first time when LeLe was 21 months old. She had been showing interest, so we bought a potty and talked to her about using it, then tried the three day method. The first day was pretty successful, but the next two were disasters. She just wasn’t ready so we backed off and did a gradual training process. Basically we decided to keep the potty out in the open and on weekends we would have her naked from the waist down. She used the potty on and off and we had a few accidents here and there. On occasion, she would ask for a diaper and if she did, we gave her one. We also started occasionally leaving the house without a diaper on and telling her that we were “practicing.” This seemed to work; she never had an accident while we were out, and it went on for a couple of months. A month ago, I decided to take a few days off work and get her fully potty trained over a 5 day period.
We started on a Thursday morning. I bought a potty for the upstairs too so we had one on both floors. I had her naked from the waist down and gave her plenty of fluids. I told her she would get one chocolate chip if she peed in the potty and two if she had a bowel movement. On the first day, she peed multiple times on the potty but held out on a bowel movement until I put a diaper on her for nap time. The next day was similar, multiple times peeing on the potty and bowel movement in her nap diaper. On the third day, she woke up from her nap completely dry and asked to use the potty right when she woke up. Later that night, she had an accident on the floor, but it seemed like she was scared to have a bowel movement in the potty.
On the fourth day, we left the house and went grocery shopping. She was dry the whole time and also woke up dry from her nap. She asked for the potty multiple times and even had a teeny tiny bowel movement in the potty. Mr. Cereal was away for work, so we called him to tell him and LeLe was super excited about her accomplishment. The fifth day we went out for a longer period of time and she had one bowel movement in the potty and one accident.
Since then, she has been doing great. We occasionally have an accident from her, mostly when she is with the babysitter or when she gets distracted by something. Mr. Cereal and I are really good about asking her over and over again if she needs the potty and celebrating with her when she does it right, but it is harder with her other caretakers. I expect that by the end of the summer and the start of school, we will not be having any more accidents. She does on occasion ask for a diaper, but not very often and that is usually a cue that she need to have a bowel movement. She is napping without a diaper and waking up dry every time. Overnight will probably be a little way off, but for now she is doing great!
I’m happy that we decided to do it in a more prolonged way. I think she got more and more comfortable as we went along and I think that helped her confidence when it was really time to be done with the diapers.
Did potty training take more than one attempt for you?
guest
Our little one (3 years) was trained at 2.5. We still get the occasional accident — mainly ‘dribbles’ in her underwear, sometimes full blown accidents if we’ve left the reminding too long or if we have done plenty of reminding, but she’s so distracted that she’s says no. Our little lady will ask for a diaper for a bowel movement, or she just waits for bedtime and goes in her pull-up. On occassion she’ll have a bowel movement at daycare (in the toilet) and we (and they) praise her for that. Because she’s now napping less, they let her sleep in underwear for nap time (she only naps at daycare, not at home). Our pedi says that little ones will eventually learn how to poo in the toilet and that we should praise LO when she does, but not give it a second thought when she asks for a diaper, or makes a bowel movement in her pull up. We just change her and move on.
pomelo / 5524 posts
Our LO wasn’t trained until after 3 – he was 3 years, 3 months to be exact. We attempted just before 3, but he very clearly wasn’t ready, and he had a little brother on the way that was born within days of his birthday. So we took a 6 month hiatus, and decided to train over our Christmas break. It went far better than expected. He’s 3 months shy of 4, and he still does have some accidents here and there if he gets super into something and forgets to go, but he’s only ever had one night accident. We night trained at the same time and it went really well.
guest
I don’t want to burst any bubbles, but potty training is NEVER done! I used to think it was a one weekend kind of thing and that was that, but my daughter will be 4 in a week, she potty trained 2 years ago and had 2 accidents in one day, two days ago – 2 years after we “trained”. She asked to start using the potty at 2, so it wasn’t like we pushed her into it too early. I am looking forward to the day I no longer have to remind (fight) her to go potty every hour or two. Best wishes! I hope your training is more successful. I had no idea it would be such a long process!