Potty Training - Chicago,IL

In my experience with my 3 kids, later is better than earlier. Even if they are showing some signs, if they are too young, they can't always grasp the complete concept and it tends to drag out for weeks or even months. I have found it better to have them in diapers for a few months longer and then have the training over and done with in just a matter of days. Boys tend to train later (36 to 42 months), but I waited with my daughter until she was 28 months or so and she was trained in 4 days, including stinky's and nap/nighttime. Best wishes to you!

My 3rd daughter trained herself at about 20 monthes. I told her to wait but she watched her big sisters, and was determined and never had an accident. Potty training can be time consuming and stressful if the child doesn't lead, so I would watch your daughter to see if she is interested, hold off if she isn't because it will take much longer!
Good Luck
B.

We just potty trained our daughter and she was 28 months. I think that it all depends on whether or not your daughter is ready. Does she show signs of being ready? If so, then I would just try it and see. We had tried to start a little earlier and it just didn't work because she wasn't ready yet. When she was finally ready, it ended up being a breeze!!!

Good luck with it all!!

We potty trained our son when he was about 31 months. First I was putting him on the potty before bath time just for him getting used to it.
Then I basically put on him his Cars underwear (he chose them) that he could feel getting wet and very often I was putting him on the potty. He learnt quite fast how to pee. Of course there were accidents but this is how he learnt. With #2 it took about two weeks as initially he wanted to have pull-up on and then slowly he warmed up to the idea of pooping in his potty.

No way is that too soon, my daughter waw potty trained at 18 months, and my son was done right around 24 months. Who would want to change a 3y/o diaper, surely not me. With my daughter, just praising her worked really well. With my son, after he went potty, we wound say , pound it, hit fists....he absolutely loved that. You just have to make them feel like big girls and boys.....oh another thing.......don't use pull-ups during the day.....make them wear real underwear...pull-ups are too much like diapers. My kids only wore then at night when we were first potty training.

Yes. Unless you want a long hard road.SOme kids do pick it up early, but just a few.

We just finished potty training my daughter after trying everything under the sun. I didn't realize that the success depending more on her readiness than anything else. No matter what you try, if she's not ready, it's not going to happen. I had the idea that my daughter should be potty trained by the time she was two years old. All that happened, was I ended up frustrated. So we waited. I wanted her potty trained by 3 but she wasn't 100% ready. I finally realized that she was too dependent on her pull-ups so I just stopped using them. We talked about going on the potty and her being a big girl. I went out and let her pick out new panties and she loved them! I tried using little gifts as rewards but it wasn't working. My daughter loves Chuck E. Cheese so I used that as our final reward. I told her that when she went on the potty all the time - no more diapers - we would have a whole night at Chuck E Cheese. That seemed to work. The Chuck E Cheese website has incentive charts for different things with kids and when they fill out the charts for 2 weeks, they get something free when they come in. She loved it and we've only had 1 accident in a month. Good luck.

Hi Brenda,
My daughter is 20 months and we are starting slowly. Her dr. said she is ready, since she tells us "peepee" and "poopoo" and is usually rght. She also sits fully clothed on her potty seat, but doesn't like it yet without clothes. I think that if your DD is showing signs, then why not try? It can't really hurt anything, just may take longer. Good luck, and let me know if you find something that works!!!
E.

My only advise to you is let her lead the way. I would say definitely expose her to the potty and make her interested. Let her see you go potty so she knows what it is about, but if you don't stress out she won't. My daughter started being interested at about 20 months but was not trained until right about 3 yrs old. I used to listen to other people and I started stressing out about when she would learn. I started comparing her to other kids and that did not work. I tried to set a time table on this but when she was ready she decided and just started going to the bathroom on her own. When she was ready she was ready. Good luck :)

I agree with all of the responses that mention her readyness. My 17 month old granddaughter LOVES to do everything that her big sister - 3 1/2 yrs - does, including sitting on the potty, and she's been doing that since right after her 1st birthday, but she only does it every once in a while (she's gone #1 maybe 5 or 6 times, and #2 once), so she's not ready. But I'm thrilled that she does what she does on it!!!