Potty Training???? - Rowlett, TX

i am potty training my 2 year old right now. Was using pullups for a while before she turned two and a few weeks after. Was really getting no where for a lot of reasons. However, I decided one weekend to put her in the plastic lined underwear. Doing a lot better.. I feel like we are making progress forward. I would recommend throwing away the pullups except for sleeping; it forces the parent to take the child to the potty more often b/c you don't want to clean up a mess. I take mine every 1-1/2 hours. She is doing really well. Also, we have been using a sticker chart to make it fun. She gets a ton of stickers when she goes in the potty. Good luck~

we are in the process of doing that right now. the thing i like about the thick cotton panties and plastic covers is that they don't leak. So i don't have to clean up a huge mess everytime she has an accident. And we can go places without worrying that she will pee everywhere. Don't know if it works yet but i am certainly going to never go back to pull-ups. I know it will just take time and I am trying to be patient. But this is my second time around b/c a few months ago i did just go back to pull-ups and we have had to start completley over. Good luck!

We did exactly that with my son, my daughter, and my niece. It took some convincing to get my sister to keep my niece in panties (still she will occasionally put her in a pull-up if they have lots of errands to run, but when she is with me, she ONLY wears panties). They seemed to treat a pull-up the same as a diaper. They didn't care if it was wet, but they sure hated having wet underware/panties. It will be several days to a week of multiple accidents, but it will be well worth the extra work. My children learned very quickly how to get to the potty before they had an accident.

OK, everyone keeps talking like pull-ups are the nemesis in potty-training, so I need to share my experience. I think the problem is, parents use pull-ups for the wrong purpose in training. Of course the child thinks it's a diaper- it is! But pull-ups saved my sanity when we were on and off the potty 20 times an hour. We had the potty chair in the living room, and I would have him sit on it at intervals throughout the day. If he went, he got an m&m, praise, etc. If he didn't, no big deal we tried later. I never pretended the pull-up was anything other than a diaper, but my son figured out really fast how much he liked getting his m&m and he would want to sit on the potty every 20 min and squeeze out a few drops to get his candy, so I was going crazy lying him down and diapering all day long. He was not consistent enough yet for underwear (sometimes he would sit and do nothing, and 5 minutes later fill his diaper), so I used the pull-up as a convenient diaper- so much easier to pull on and off in a hurry! Plus, the little wet/dry emblems on the front let me know if he was wet or not on quick glance. He went one or 2 days dry, or just barely a leak, so then I went straight to real underwear. I continued to use the pull-up OVER his underwear early on because at the store, church, etc., I was afraid we wouldn't make it to the bathroom in time or at church he would be with someone else and was not good about telling us yet, so that saved me on a few clothes changes (all I needed was extra underwear, not a whole outfit!) So I actually do recommend the pull ups for the early training, but not as a substitute for underwear- just an easier way to diaper on and off and save some laundry! My son was in underwear full time by the time he was your daughters age. However, you mentioned she is already dry some, so you may be able to go straight to the plastic covers for the occasional accidents. But just wanted to share my positive experience with pull-ups!

I haven't done this yet as my daughter is several months younger than yours but I've been researching. I discovered, and moms that use cloth diapers probably already know all about this, cloth training pants. They are like pull-ups but cloth or like super absorbent thick panties. I'm thinking about trying them when we get ready to do this. My mother swears that she went straight to underwear with us and that's what she advises me to do, but I'm betting she doesn't know about these cloth training pants. It seems to me they would be a little less messy than panties and that you wouldn't have the problem of the child treating a regular pull-up like a diaper.
I'd like to hear from someone who has used them. And good luck to you with the training.

That is exactly what I recommend. We also moved our potty chair into the living room and out of the bathroom. That way, it was top of mind for both my daughter and myself all day long. I also took that potty chair with me when we left the house. That way if she said she had to go potty when we were in route somewhere, or even after we left a store, we could pull over and I could put her on the potty in the back of my SUV. That wont' always be easy if you have a sedan or something like that, but it can be done.

In addition, if you leave the house and are worried about accidents in the carseat or at someone elses house, you can always put a pull-up over the panties. It will preserve your items, but still give her the feeling of true wetness on the panties which are closest to her skin. You'll only have to change panties, instead of all her clothes. We used this trick, especially on longer drives across the metroplex or to visit grandma in Austin.

Good luck. Sounds like she won't really take long at all. She just needs to learn to recognize when she has to go, and having the feeling of wetness a few times will help thath along.

I stayed home as much as I could for about a week and went straight to panties with the plastic covers. I set a timer to remind myself to take her potty often. I even put them on my daughter when we went out. It seemed to work really well. Just make sure you have lots of spare panties and clothes ready to go.. it will help you if you have them handy and don't have to search for them every time.

For sure! Go straight to panties. We only use pull ups for sleeping right now, and on our first few outings away from home..like at the grocery store etc. It sounds like she is more than ready, so a few days of routine at home should do the trick. Good luck..it is a hectic week, but the end result is so worth it:) ~A.~

I agree...go straight to panties or cotton training pants with a vinyl cover....and don't look back! :) Good luck, we are one month in and it is going great, still working on #2 though :)

Yes it works! I took this same advice when I was potty training my son and only used underwear. We stayed at home and after some accidents he was pee trained in 4 days. It took another 6 months before he was poop trained but that's another story. When we went out in public he wore his underwear but w/a pull-up over them to minimize any accidents. This way he still felt his underwear on and had to remember to use the potty. I feel the consistency of using underwear only helped make the potty training process so much easier.