Parent Led Potty Training

Between 2 and 2 1/2 is when I have always found it to be the easiest to potty train a child. I think once they start to get older they start to see the control they have over their bowels movements and it can make it a lot harder on the parents.

You need a good 3-4 day period to really buckle down the hatches and get him trained. Get rid of the pull-ups (except nap and bedtime). Get rid of the plastic liners. Have a mop on hand or a carpet cleaner on hand. I also find multiple potties throughout the house make it a whole lot easier.

Naked is best for the first day or so, this helps them associate the sensation with the effect. Then put on undies, expect an accident or two, they kind feel like diapers at first. Stay consistent and do not get mad at accidents. Accidents are normal, just point him in the right direction.

As for grandma, if she can't be consistent, then he doesn't go there till he is completely trained. You also need to get him to do some sitting to pee, this is when the pooping will happen.

Make a HUGE deal when he is successful.

Honestly right now is about training you. Then you will slowly see the reins handed over to him.

I have never had a kid in diapers past 2 1/2, and he had learning disabilities.

You can do it, you just have to really ready to make it happen.

Have you tried a simple reward system? For my 1st, who fully potty trained in about a week at 2.5 years old, I put him in underpants, took him regularly (about once an hour though, not every 20 min), and if he went he got an M&M reward. If he had a BM he got 2 M&Ms. BUT - I didn't give my boys the stand-up option until after they were tall enough to do it in the real potty without a stool, so there was no difference between training for pee and for BM.

Oh - we also watched the "Potty Power" video a lot in preparation for training. Both my kids liked that video, and it gets the point across.

Good luck

You really need to do naked training. It really makes life so much easier. Your son is more than old enough to pick it up quickly.

I know you've been encouraged to do naked training in the past, have you tried it? It's summer. Go outside with a potty and let him run naked. If he goes in the toilet, now he just needs to learn timing. Accidents are necessary for this. Stop taking him every 20 minutes. Instead, give him lots of water, play outside naked, and see if you can't make a game out of getting the pee in the potty. I did this with my first two kids at 18 months. They picked it up quickly, and night and poop trained at 21 months.

In my experience, btw, my son was easier. He started taking himself when we were on vacation! He did spray his pants occasionally - a tiny trickle- for a year, but it was no big deal: 99% was going in the potty.

My big question is: do you have hardwood floors, or something other than carpet? If so, off with the pants, pull-ups, everything. Let him go completely bottomless so he can literally see the results. Little boys are visual, empirical creatures, and they need to physically see these substances leaving their bodies in order to to connect what happens at the potty with the "I have to go" feeling. I'd also recommend putting a potty in at least two rooms, so he can have the feeling and see a potty when the feeling's there. I do NOT recommend asking him or taking him, since the whole point is that HE has to identify when he needs to go.

Once you get some successes with him completely bottomless, you can move up to underwear (no pull-ups, no liners, underwear) but no pants. And then he graduates to pants and you're done.

That absolutely worked with my son, and in very short order, but I will also confess that we rewarded him with children's vitamins and skittles, out of hopeless, floundering desperation (he was -- confession -- nearly 3 1/2). That helped too, but the bottomless --> pantsless --> to fully clothed progression is what really did the trick.

Any chance he doesn't have to start preschool in the fall? Can he just continue with daycare?

In my experience, boys are 100x harder to train than girls. Our son was a year battle to train (vs. his sister, who decided she was ready at two and had it mastered in about a month). We tried it all. Letting him take the lead (yeah, no ... I swear he'd still be in PullUps now at 10 if we waited), doing potty parties (we looked like fools and it didn't work), potty dolls, taking him in every 30 minutes. He was the last of the kids in his daycare room to move up to preschool. We had to force the issue when he was three and a half and just moved him to underwear (no liner). That's what really made the difference with him. Pee running down his leg wasn't so much fun. However, it also meant we were constantly cleaning furniture and floors. Not pretty, but it was done in a week.

Two and a half, though, is young for a boy to master potty training. If there's any way at all to put off preschool, I would.

Ditto using some sort of reward system.
If stickers work for your child, that is one way. If you'd prefer something else, use something else. We used lifesavers candies. The individually wrapped fruit ones.
And I didn't set a timer at all. I paid attention to how long since my son had been, and prompted him as necessary (maybe every hour or so, more if he had been drinking a lot of water, etc). When he was done, and washed, he got to choose a fruit life saver from a clear ziplock baggie. He enjoyed the power of choosing which color/flavor. And the reward happened (the candy itself, and the power of choosing) as soon as his potty trip was complete.

Over time, he was more interested in getting back to the business of playing than getting the reward. And it naturally stopped.
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The bonus of using candy vs. stickers, was that it was portable. I could take a baggie of candies in my purse if we were going somewhere, so he still went potty when we weren't at home. At grandma's house. At the store. At the park. Wherever. No keeping track of stickers or anything else... instant and done.

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ETA 2
Didn't "catch" the line about stand up kind of guy. Ditto Mom2many. You should have him sit to pee (at least some of the time). I taught my son to sit from the beginning (learning to stand and pee came after he mastered consistency peeing every time sitting), and we never experienced any issues with BMs. Over the years, seeing the questions I have on this subject, I have always wondered if there was any correlation between that with boys. When you are sitting, if you pee, sometimes poop happens, too. It just does. And with little ones, there is no sense in confusing them about what to do when they go to the bathroom. Just teach them one thing: sitting on the toilet... for both pee and poop.
Later, you can encourage (or suggest, or whatever) him to stand and pee. For what it's worth, I'd prolong the sitting as long as you can. It'll save you some floor cleanup behind the toilet.

Maybe he'll train this summer and maybe he won't.
Some kids have no trouble at this age while others just can't till they are 3 1/2 (give or take 6 or so months).
With someone taking him to potty every 20 minutes it sounds like it's you who are being trained rather than him.
A big part of potty training that gets ignored is - the child has got to want to.
If he doesn't want to, he just doesn't have the maturity for it yet and there's nothing anyone can do to mature him any faster than he already is.
It only makes for pointless power struggles.
The preschool our son went to didn't take kids that were under 3 1/2.
So his becoming potty trained at 3 1/2 was perfect.
He was practically 6 when he started kindergarten, so 3 or so years in preschool was plenty of time.

Mom2many's method is practical, methodical, and it works. The only child of mine that wasn't toilet trained by 2 years old was my Autistic child, but we used the same method with her and it did work. We just had to adjust it to her needs.

Have you tried the M&M's for going? One for pee and two for pooh? That worked for us. My friend did Jelly Belly's. A different friend did Hershey Kisses.

I have 4 children all a little under 2 years apart. The oldest is a girl and she was easy and trained by 3. The younger 3 are boys. The middle 2 refused to train and we kinda let them take the lead. They were almost 4 by the time they were trained. Then there was the youngest. He was 2.5 and I was tired of diapers. He didn't really have a choice I guess. I just took away his diapers. I tried putting regular underware on him but he would pee through them, so I put just pants on him and left him go "commando" He hated the feeling of the pee going down his legs and figured it out in a few hours. So I guess I was mean but it worked. I am going to suggest to not let him run around without anything on as he is a boy and most boys think it is funny to watch themselves pee and not care where they do it.