Potty Training - Sandy, OR

I wish I had this web-site 7yrs ago to ask this same question. I made a mistakes with my daughter that I want to mention so hopefully you can have a better time.
My daughter hated being messy. I didn't know that when a little girl sits on a potty she needs to keep her Knees together. She peed on herself and the floor. She was mortified. So she wanted nothing to do with potty training for 6 months.
I picked a day, hid all the diapers and made her run around the house bare bottom until she was so desperate not to pee on herself she finally gave in and used the potty.
I don't believe in the candy reward-sugar is not a reward.. we lived on a main street and she watched the bus go by all the time.. so we came up with the reward of a ride on the city bus.
Going #2 was another problem (she wore pull-ups at night). So she picked out a CareBear and he sat on the back of the toilet in his box. She asked everyday to play with the CareBear until the day she went #2 in the potty.
Hope this helps

My son is about the same age and I have started giving him a chocolate chip when he pees on the potty and a frosted animal cookie when he does #2 and that has made a huge difference in both his willingness and his coming and telling me when he needs to go. Yes, sometimes this means he has a cookie for breakfast, but hey, it is working!

Stickers! Lots and lots of stickers! My daughter 28 months, showed signs of readiness a couple of weeks ago, so we went to the store bought a mirage of different stickers, made a "Potty Chart" that she can put a sticker on each time she uses the potty, and sometimes two!, even if she doesn't go. We hung the potty chart up in the bathroom with some books to "read" when she is sitting on the potty, and we have been in big girl panties all day except for nap and bed time.

I also think alot of "potty" talk helps! I talk about needing to go to the bathroom and make a big deal out of it if I really have to go! And, for her, I get really silly and give her alot of praise and kisses for using the big girl potty.

All pretty basic stuff, but praise and stickers have seemed to be winners for us!

Hello N.,
I have a seven year old son who is autistic and potty training him was probably the hardest thing I've had to do with him. Have you ever noticed that kids can't resist wetting in the bath? My situation is a little different because he is a boy but I think it might work with a girl too. If you have a potty chair and can get her to sit on it while you run the bath she might just go while the water is running. Much praise is always helpful if she succeeds even a little bit. The other thing I did was put my son's feet in a small tub while he was standing at the toilet and then I poured warm water on his feet.It worked like a charm! It wasn't long before he didn't need the water on his feet. He just saw the water running in the tub and went in the toilet. It sounds crazy but it works. Hope this is helpful and good luck. Anne

i bought the books "once upon a potty" and "everyone poops." (i just recently saw both at barnes and noble) both my kids loved the books and we'd read them as they sat on their potty. not that the books teach them anything but it kept them sitting on the potty long enough for something to possibly happen and then they'd begin to understand what the feeling was like when they had to go.

my brother and his wife bought those things that make the water blue and told my neice that she could magically turn it green if she peed in the toilet. it worked!

I just finished potty training my just turned three year old son this last week. I use "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" by Nathan H. Azrin, Ph.D. and Richard M. Foxx, Ph.D. He's my fourth kid to be trained, and after a week of potty training with all of my kids, accidents are extremely rare.

I like this method because the child "potty trains" a doll before you have them try. You also never have to get mad at your child. From my experience, when my kids had an accident, they never would practice the recommended 10 times. I only made them do it about three. Also, the book never mentions hand washing!!! They will need help with this until they are older. However, this method gets them toileting independently very quickly. I saw another lady at church Sunday who has been "potty training" for over a year now and he still is on again off again with going on the toilet. My son is dry with no accidents (including bedtime). Your child may or may not have the same experience at bedtime (my worst experience with betime wetting was my second child wet the bed three nights in a row the first week he was being trained and then very rarely after that). My best experience was my third child who only had maybe two accidents total and never wet the bed (I don't expect most children to be this easy).

Good luck!!! Each child is different, but if you follow this method and your child is ready, a week of perseverance pays off and you have a fully potty trained child (and they may be fully trained in that first day!)

Hi

We made a game out of it. I kept reminding her that if she needed to go to tell me and then we'd race to the bathroom of course she always won but it was a game. We'd talk or read a little story then when she was done, we'd have a little treat. :) Another thing I did was make sure that I didn't have to run errons or go to many places for the first week or so. We would go from home to Grandma's or somewhere we could go to the bathroom as soon as we arrived. I did the same thing with our son and it worked really well.

Well, since you don't know when they have to go and they don't tell you at first, you put them on the potty like every half hour and tell them to make pee pee or poo poo in the potty. Once you figure her 'schedule' you can be a little more accurate. Some parent do reward systems. I never recomend giving any kids candy as it is a terrible thing for kids of all ages. We used sticker charts. He got a sticker on his paper every time he made in the potty. He got to pick the sticker and I would give it to him and he would stick it on the paper where he wanted. It was just a plain piece of paper that I wrote accross the top something about going potty.

I used "Once Upon A Potty for Girls" DVD. It is really good and only about 10 minutes long so it is just long enough and not to long for their attention span. It has a really cute potty song also. My girls loved it!!

A. G

"Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" worked on my 27 month old. You can find it on www.amazon.com.

When I potty trained my son, I put him on the potty when he got up. I also put underwear and pants on him afterwards. If he used the potty, I'd set the timer for 30 minutes to an hour. If he didn't use the potty, I'd set the timer for 15 minutes and we'd try again then. GET READY FOR ACCIDENTS! My son was 28 months when I potty trained him and it took us 3 days until he was telling ME he had to go and we stopped using a timer and 5 days until he was accident-free.

I guess my advice is to pick a week just for potty training. Devote ALL your time to it (we didn't leave the house!). Use a timer. Do NOT use pull-ups or diapers. While potty training we only used them at naptime and bedtime. As soon as naptime was over, the pull-up came off. Don't worry about bedtime potty training. . . that happens much later. We still use a pull-up just for nighttime. Keep the washer open . . . you'll be using it A LOT! :-)

Hope this helps and at least gives you some ideas. . . they worked for us!
-A. :-)