Any Potty Training Tips

A.-When I was potty training my son, I let him pick out a potty and some stickers. Every time that he went to the potty I gave him a sticker and he put them all over his potty. He loved this.

A.,

I would suggest that you do away with the Pull-Ups and take your son straight to training underwear. The Pull-Ups were a "crutch" for my son for over a year. Once I did away with them, he only had two accidents in the underwear before realizing that be needed to get to the potty (I believe he really HATED the feeling of having wet underwear). Also, once your son masters the potty training and begins to want to go standing up, I suggest that you drop a few Fruit Loops in the toilet bowl to give him something to aim at and make it more like a game. That technique worked well for us...Good Luck!

A.,

We had a VERY positive experience with a book called Toilet Training in Less Than a Day by Azrin and Fox. It is an old book written in the 70's so the language is kind of sexist, but we had my son potty trained in about 5 hours. We took the 4th of July weekend so that we had a long weekend to reinforce. He never had an accident after training, even at night. He would wake up and go to the bathroom by himself. We did modify the method by using a stepstool and toilet seat rather than a potty chair. I think it's just easier. Some people think the method is cruel, but it is really all about positive reinforcement. The child is NOT going to like "practicing", but in no way do I feel it is psychologically harmful. "Practicing" is when they have an accident in their pants, they have to run real fast from different rooms in the house to the bathroom and practice pulling down their pants fast. They aren't allowed to change their wet clothes until they practice. The whole process is actually very empowering for the child and noticed it positively affected many other areas. This was 10 years ago, but we plan on using the method again for our two toddlers soon. Just be sure to use the checklist at the front of the book to make sure your child is ready. Do not attempt it if they are not. If you want more details, feel free to e-mail me. My husband was actually the one to train our son, but I read the book too.

A., this is what worked for me: At first, evertime my boys attempted to potty they would get 3 M&M's. Later we progressed to 3 M&M's if they were succesful at putting something in the potty. We then switched over to pure praise and no chocolate. My boys are 5 and 3 and my first was potty trained at 3 and 2nd at 2 1/2. I also have a 7 month old baby boy. I hope this helps.

I have a little girl and I hear it is different for boys. But I used M&M's. When she went to the bathroom she got an M&M. I didn't ever give her them unless she went to the big girl potty. We also sang a song everytime she went. She would get really excited. It's worth a try, it worked for us.

Good Luck! What worked for me was staying home for four days, reminding him to go every 30 minutes and lots and lots of patience. For us, I had to put him in underwear the PullUps were an easy way out for him and I also rewarded with jelly beans.

I have a two year old daughter but this might help you as well. I have an old calendar that I use. How this works is whenever she pees or poops on the potty she gets a sticker on the calendar. Every time she gets a month filled up with stickers she gets to pick out A (just one) toy from the store. We make a big deal out of it and do a happy dance. She also gets an immediate reward of two m&m's. She is doing well with the system. Maybe it will work for you.