What Is the Definition of "Potty Trained"?

It takes time, but so far what he has learned is that if he does not want to try, he can always go back to diapers. My son wanted to go back to pull-ups, and had 13 accidents on day one with big boy undies. Once he realized that he was not getting his diapers back, the accidents went down to 1 or 2 a day, and then 1 or 2 a week, until there was none.

A.-

I A. asked potty training questions like yours a lot in my parent coaching practice. This is what I tell my parents.

For your child's entire life, when they needed to pee they just did without any other steps. It takes time to retrain their mind & body to wait and pee in the bathroom. Additionally, no matter what "special" programs/videos will tell you, you cannot potty train a child in 1 day/ weekend. It is a process that takes time.

First, diapers today pull liquid away from a child's skin so well, children of potty training age don't know when they pee in their diaper, which is a key to learning potty training. This is why using "big boy pants" is important. It helps put the feeling of a full bladder and peeing together in the child's mind.

Next, reminding your child to pee often is important at first, but also creating a system where they remember on their own is important too. I like to give the child a watch with a timer on it set to 30 minutes. When the timer goes off, it reminds the child to stop and try to use the bathroom. Eventually this will create a habit of using the bathroom often.

Lastly, if you want your child to become potty trained you must be consistant. Only doing the training at night or on the weekends will not create success. Until the child shows they are not ready, the parents & daycare needs to be on the same page and continue the training every day.

I hope these answers have helped. Potty training takes time and can be frusterating. I wish you the best during the process.

R. Magby

Consistency is key. Once you make the decision to potty train, stick with it even if it is a headache or inconvenient.

Once my daughter was agreeable to using the potty and excited about wearing underwear, we made a committment to do it. That meant underwear at night too.

We made sure we had her go potty frequently during the day (ie. telling her it's time to use the bathroom. Many kids will say "no" when asked, so having them go through the motions each time is best).

We also woke up and had her go potty once or twice at night for a while . . . she only peed in her bed once after we started training her. This of course will not work for every child, but as a parent you can take the time and try.

It definitley took several months of actively working on gonig potty for her to start to do it on her own. A potty sticker chart is great too.

Our son started showing interest in the potty at 25 months, so we got started. He was great at going when we reminded him, so we saw lots of promise and wondered when the magic day would arrive that we wouldn't have to remind him. My advice is to not follow advice that you will have a potty trained kid in a week or a month, or any short length of time. Even with consistency, they will be ready when they are ready. We were both consistent and encouraging, and for 11 months we traveled the potty road, knowing we probably started too early, but were convinced he would get it and we stayed patient. Then right after his 3rd birthday, he decided it was time, and he went by himself every time during the day with no accidents. He would actually stop playing or whatever he was doing, and go, because he knew a mess in the pants was not what he wanted anymore. So good luck, don't get discouraged, and don't put a timeline on it or you will get frustrated, just trust your son and it will happen, even if it feels like it never will!
P.S. Now that he has it, we make sure he wears pants that are easy to pull on and off so he doesn't get stuck. No buttons or snaps that he's not comfortable with.

Practice, practice, practice! It will happen, just takes time. My first two boys took their time; my last one trained himself (nice surprise, I guess!)

Don't expect it to happen in a week or a weekend. It could take months. And don't get down on the little guy. Just continual, gentle reminders. He WILL get there, I promise you.

With my son, who is 3, we had to remind him to go every hour or so for a few months. Then we started asking him if he had to go rather than telling him to go which helped to make him think about his body signals and after a while he started telling us without any prompting. We also had a sticker chart for potty success and used suckers for #2 success. We used rewards for a few weeks or so during the transition from telling him to go to him deciding to go and then he did pretty good after that with just verbal encouragment.

They say it takes three weeks for something to become a habit. A weekend is not nearly enough. I'd urge you to, next time, make the decision and stick with it, even if it means cleaning up accidents. (Try it for a time when you are home, if you can, have him play in a room that is easy to clean, and, have him help you clean up after wards.)

It is really impressive that he was able to keep his pants dry for a weekend even with the reminders, after only a day or so. Potty training is USUALLY a process with set backs and successes. Most kids have accidents for a while, only gradually phasing them out.

If you want some suggestions, the book 'potty training in one day' has some methods for helping the kid establish not only their potty control, but also their independence on the matter. Even if you don't decide to go for the one day thing (which often is not actually the miraculous one day perfection it seems anyway), some of the techniques may help you.

My daughter started to stay dry while napping and then it was when i decided to start the Potty Training. I made a big deal every time she went and used the potty. I took her every hour or so for the first month and she wasn't always dry. After about 2 months she started to go by herself, and now, after 6 months it's"me, me me". Good luck.

Unless you want to be on him every second I would recognize that maybe he's not ready and lay off it for a while. You can't make them be potty trained. They have to be ready and want to do it. My son was 4 years old before he finally got it, and 4 1/2 before he finally decided he was done with pull ups at night. I don't have the energy to follow them around and make sure they use the potty every 20 minutes. I took a more relaxed attitude and let them decide. He will do it when he's ready. Relax and he will too!

Just a suggestion that worked for us. We used the "Cool Alert" pull-ups for awhile before we switched our son to "big boy" underpants. They get cold as soon as a little bit of urine touches them and the child immediately feels the coldness. It helps them to associate and learn the feeling of having to go with actually going. Now our son, who is completely potty trained, says "I'm cold" when it's time to go to the bathroom. It's funny because he's not actually physically cold, but that is the feeling he knows when he has to go. We were pretty lucky and it worked really well. We only had one or two accidents early on when we switched him over to underwear and he has been potty trained for the past 6 months or so. Good luck to you and don't give up. Your son will get it with a little perserverance and patience from you both.

My son is 6.5 and I still have to tell him at least a few times a week to go because he's doing the potty dance but doesn't want to take the time to go because he thinks he will miss something. If your son is showing signs of being ready, then you can certainly "train" him, but yes, you will have to remind him regularly and you will still have to remind him "periodically" until he's probably somewhere between 7 and 9 years old. In fact, a potty training book written by a woman who has three kids of her own and has run/worked in a preschool/daycare setting for decades and helped train hundreds of kids says that what you have to do is to start by having your child sit on the potty and try to go every 15 to 20 minutes. You also need to have set times where even if the 20 minutes has not passed, you have the child try to go - e.g. - first thing when he gets up in the morning, just before he takes a nap or goes to bed at night, just before you leave the house to go anywhere, etc. And yes, you are supposed to keep up the schedule even if you are away from home - at least as best you can. Gradually, as your child starts to get the process (and you have a better sense of your child's rhythms), you can increase the interval between tries. You have to take away all the emotion though and just be very matter of fact about it. She suggests that you, and we did, set a timer or some sort of alarm so that 1) you don't forget and 2) your child learns that when the timer rings it is time to try to go.

Good luck. It will happen. You just have to be patient, try not to let your emotions be part of the equation, and just be matter of fact about it.

N.

Hi there,

There are lots of ideas and theories about what it means to be Potty-trained. I don't have lots of time, but I'm including a link to my favorite article for early childhood ed students on this topic.

http://betterkidcare.psu.edu/AngelUnits/OneHour/ToiletLea...

I personally would say that no, if your child needs constant reminding they are likely not toilet-learned/potty-trained. As a preschool teacher, the criteria is not that they "can" go when they sit on the toilet, but that they are readily listening to their bodies.

For what it's worth, many quality preschool programs (usually more progressive ones) take children who are in the process of using the toilet. We find that it's sometimes the case that children who are less interested in using the toilet at home are more interested because their peers are using it at school. Without that intrinsic motivation, children are less likely to want to break off from playing to follow their body's cues. I hope the article above can help you assess where your son is and how to support him while letting him be ultimately responsible for this area of growth and learning. Besides sleeping and eating habits, parents bring a lot of concern to the toileting issues our children have...sounds like you are really keeping a lot of balance here. Kudos!

I think that "potty trained" is defined as the child recognizing the urge to go to the bathroom and following thru with going on the potty.
It isn't an easy thing for children to understand because for all their life, they just did it and didn't have to recognize the signals. They have to go thru the ropes to figure it out...first they go and then they tell you, then they tell you as they are going and then they tell you they need to go and then you hurry to the potty and then finally they tell you and they make it to the potty.
Each child is very different and some are ready early and some are later. But I do believe that each child will do it at their pace. Achieving success requires two things - willingness on your child's part (as they want to do it) and consistancy. Otherwise it is a frustrating battle for eveyone involved. At the beginning, you do have to continue to remind them to go potty and that can last for months. Accidents happen, so just be prepared. It takes a good 3 months of trial and error until most kids seem to get it. I don't know how any of those potty trained in 1 day or a weekend things work....seriously, how can they? I think it took about 3 months until we were mostly accident free and about 6 months until I declared fully day time potty trained.
I had no luck with pullups while we were training because they are just like diapers. Use training pants or underwear and if you are going out, you can always invest in some rubber pants to feel more secure or just use a pull up only then.
I guess all I can say is that if is causing stress - try again later, but if you are ready for the commitment, go for it and just be consistent and it will happen.
Good luck.

With my son who turned 3 in August we did the same thing with him. I believe that in order to train him you have to train yourself to remind him until he catches on no matter how long it takes. So he is still training but if you keep with telling him to go eventually he will just be trained. Good luck...

He should start giving you cues that he has to go or is able to say something to the idea of going before you think of potty training. This way you know that he's ready. Also, make sure you don't use pull-ups if at all possible unless necessary. Using those only condones going to the bathroom in his underwear, they are too much like diapers. Remember too that it takes 15-30 min for the body to digest food. Read his cues...if he starts to do a small dance, grabs himself...etc. Never ask him to go, always tell him. If you ask him, it's giving him an option and if you KNOW he has to go, last thing you want him to do is say no and take off. :D I never did rewards for my son, as I believed that it wasn't necessary. Yet, I praised him with all that I had to let him know he did a great job. To me, if you aren't going to get candy/treats at school or when you are an adult for using the restroom, why teach your child that every time they go...they will earn a treat/prize? Just my belief. Find usual times too...i.e. before you leave somewhere, when he first gets up, before going to bed, before/after a meal...etc. Hopefully this helps. Just some ideas that I had when I potty trained my son. Worked like a charm. :D

sounds like you might need to go for a period longer than a week! When my son potty trained (which was right after he turned 2...by his choice, not mine), I asked him to go every 30 minutes or so, then the next day lengthened it to 45, and keep going. After 4 days or so, he started to tell me that he DIDN'T have to go, and then he started to tell me when he DID have to go - so, your son may not be ready (I like your term parent trained) but, if you want him in underwear, and you are willing to keep reminding him, I don't think that you are doing anything harmful...he will get it eventually!

Yes you need to constantly ask him if he needs to go potty like every 30 minutes or so throughout the day. After he eats, after he plays, after he drinks, before you leave etc etc. Just because you put big boy pants on him doesn't mean he'll remember... he has spent the only three years of his life in a diaper so he needs to learn to remember and learn to feel when he needs to potty. Accidents are going to happen if you don't stay on top of it. In fact, accidents are going to happen no matter what you do, it is just part of learning to use a toilet.

I suggest using a reward system. I used M&Ms and my son got two M&Ms each time he went pee in the toilet and if he didn't have an accident all day long then he got a matchbox car before bedtime. I spent about $30 on about 30 cars and when they were all gone he wasn't really having accidents anymore. It took a little over two months probably before he mostly didn't have accidents anymore. I started this at 2 1/2 and by the time he turned 3 he almost always went without me asking anymore. But, even now, my son is 5, I still have to ask him to go potty sometimes. He will stand and dance around holding his pants because he doesn't want to leave the room and miss anything.

Anyway, it takes lots rewards and consistancy to get it done... good luck!