Potty Training - Citrus Heights,CA

Is he ready? My second trained himself. He saw the big boy underwear and he was hooked. Trained a month after his third birthday. If he is showing signs encourage him but if not ...don't push it. It will be a losing battle. I am on number three and will be so excited when he's potty trained....! Good luck.

My oldest boy pretty much trained himself. My middle boy was interested when I used pennies for rewards. My youngest is going to be potty trained soon. He's 16 months old and I have him sit on the potty every night. He understands when I tell him to go sit on the potty. He's gone on it 3 times. I'll start soon. My girls were a totally different story. =)

At 2.8, he may not be ready yet. It should come soon, but readiness involves the physical ability to recognize urges and respond in time, or hold back if necessary, the cognitive ability to weigh the advantages of using the potty, and the emotional desire to attain a new and important goal. These do come together for virtually every child, and they become as eager to potty-train as they were to learn to crawl, walk or talk.

Here's an extremely helpful website you might find helpful. It gives a few variations on"readiness" checklists, plus tips on various training strategies, the best ages to start them, and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach: http://www.parentingscience.com/potty-training-tips.html

hopefully you will have an easy time with your second son. My first son it was a struggle since he didn't care and we just potty trained our 2.8 yr old son 6 weeks ago. Best advice is let him go without any thing on waist down until he gets that feeling and makes it 100%, We then slowly added underwear. First only when we went someplace and then more and more at home. If he had an accident, he went without again. It gave him practice since he did not like peeing just anyplace and I thought it was a good way to make sure he knew it was different then diapers and it worked. I was more patient and I let him have more control over the whole process without letting him have an option of not using the potty all except for night training. I let him decide at night if he wanted diaper or underwear and about night 10 I stopped asking since it was always underwear for a few nights straight. He still has accidents which tends to happen when he gets sick but he goes to the potty by himself and I let him even in public restrooms. We also did not use a potty chair, he is petite but never liked the potty chair and wanted to sit on the toilet like the rest of us so we let him. The key is NO power struggles and you won't need all the rewards, he will just want to do it himself. Good luck.

I started out having him sit on the potty to pee. I used a sticker reward chart which worked well. I never used pull-ups, just kept him in underwear all the time while at home. I asked him often if he needed to use the potty and praised him highly when he did. Expect and be patient with accidents, my son had them for awhile. All kids are different, some get the hang of peeing in the potty first and then pooping, or vice versa. My son needed a little more encouragement for pooping so we found that a few m+m's worked great as a reward.

i dont have any major tips. My son LOVED going number 2 on the potty and was trained since 2 1/2 with that but going pee was different. He did NOT like big boy underware. What i did that (surprisingly) worked was for about a month or so before his 3rd birthday i kept telling him over and over again that he is going to be 3 and 3 year olds wear big boy underware. He would repeat it back to me and i didnt push it just kept telling him that. Well guess what the day after his 3rd birthday party he asked to have big boy underware on and has been in them and trained ever since. Even at nap times. He is now 4 and has only had 3 accidents and 2 of them were during nap time early on. He still is not night trained but that is ok. Just a thought of something you could try. Every kid is different and he will get there!!