Potty Training Advice: Give It to Me Straight

My daughter is 26 months, and we just started to get serious about the potty training. She has been using the potty when she wants to since about 16 months, but has not been consistent. We just rented the "potty power" dvd and she really responded well to it. She got up this morning and asked to wear underwear. The hard part is if you want to be successful, you have to be committed. That's the hard part for me since we have such busy days, I don't always have the time necessary to put into being consistent with her. I plan on spending the next few days trying to be as consistent as possible. My son also started using the potty really young, but quickly lost interest. We totally backed off the potty training after the birth of his sister since it was a stressful time for us all, but within a few months (he was almost 3) he decided he wanted to wear underwear. It was so easy at this point. We pretty much went from pull-ups to underwear in one day and never looked back. He maybe had 3 accidents that first couple of months. He was just ready physically and emotionally at that time. We were even able to use underwear at night right from the start. I know that won't be the case with my daughter since she is younger, but I am hoping a few days of being consistent will get us off to a good start. Before we even started with either of them we let them watch us use the bathroom on a regular basis and also read lots of potty books to get them introduced to the idea. There is also an Elmo Potty movie that is pretty good about introducing basic concepts to them before they get started. With my daughter we ended up having to buy a potty chair since she got nervous on the big potty since ours is high, but my son went straight to the big potty and never had a problem with it. Take your cues from your child, if they are afraid or reluctant, back off. The worst thing you can do is start a power struggle. I know parents of almost 5 year olds that are still having issues with power struggles when it comes to the potty. We have used incentives with both of my kids and it seems to help motivate them in the beginning, but does eventually lose its effectiveness if the process takes a long time. Find out what will work for your child and run with it. Good luck and may you have lots of patience.

My daughter will be 3 at the end of August and has only been potty trained for about a month. we gave my daughter no options but to start potty training. what we did is we put her in big girl underwear (do not use pull up unless you will be out of your house and not around batrooms for a while, it gives them to much security of a diaper and they don't learn). she had accidents regulary for about 3 days but by day 4 she was telling us everytime she had to go potty. i even sent her to day care in underware she had accidents but i also sent only underware and extra shorts for when she had accidents it seemed to work out well. we started on a saturday as i work full time also and we just let our daycare lady know what we were doing and she was fine with that as long as she had extra clothes for any accidents.

some of the insentives that we gave our daughter was that when she could go potty for 1 day with out wetting her underware then we we to the store and buy her a small toy/book. we also let her go down the toy alise to pick out a big toy that she really liked we told her that if she could go potty all week like a big girl the day that mommy doesn't work we would go buy the toy she picked out. all week we would remind her of the toy (my daughter picked a princes tea set) and she would get so excited and more reasons for her to go potty.

Hi L.,
I just started potty training my daughter yesterday. She will be 3 at the end of August. We have done it a few times before but now I am trying to stick to it.
Yesterday our day went really well. I give her a sticker for everytime she goes pee in her potty chair. She earned 3 stickers yesterday and 1 this morning. I put the sticker chart (shopping list size post-it note) on the door of the bathroom so she sees it and is proud of earning those stickers. So for every 5 stickers she get a toy (Thanks goodness for the Dollar Tree). She wears "Big Girl" panties in the house, Pull-ups for small trip outings and diapers for bedtime. She had one accident yesterday but it was my fault for not having the potty chair close by (it was upstairs). She asked for a diaper close to bedtime last night, I thought she might have to go poop but she didn't. Let's face it...I'd rather clean poop from a diaper than panties.
This morning she went pee after she woke up (the 4th sticker) and she did have an accident in her pull up but we were at park for an hour and no bathrooms but I expected that.
Now we are back home and she has on the "Big Girl" panties.
Good Luck!

My daughter is pretty much done with potty training and is 2.4 years. Your situation is different from mine since you are working full time and have a busy schedule, but I think it might work for you.

Anytime you are home let her be naked from the bottom down. Dresses were great for potty training for us, but for several months, if we were home she was pretty much a flower child.

I didn't ask if she had to go to the bathroom unless she was visibly showing signs of having to go, but would say "If you have to go pee-pee, you need to tell mommy" every now and then which left it in her control. My daughter is very independent and responded negatively to be prodded about having to pee. So pee-pee dances and kind of grabbing at her bottom were tell tale signs. When I saw this if she didn't initiate it herself by saying something (tell your daughter what to say to you when she has to go and keep it consistent) then I would initiate it and remind her that she could come right back to what she was doing.

Did we have accidents? Absolutely for the first 2 weeks. There weren't tons, but definitely several over the course of the first couple weeks. But for my daughter, she had to experience accidents to learn how to time the potty right. If she cried when she had one, I kept it positive and would put her on the potty to see if she could finish. Honestly though, the accidents didn't last for a long time and she rarely had any once she got over the first hurdle. After the first 2 weeks we started letting her run around in undies and then after about another 2 weeks started wearing the out on short trips.

I didn't venture out in undies until the beginning of the second month out of my own nervousness but pretty soon she was asking to go even when wearing a diaper and so used that as my cue. She still wears a diaper for sleep but is actually always dry, just is insistent upon wearing a diaper. Who knows what that's about.

Good luck. She's older so I'm guessing if she's ready it may take even less time. I do think "potty windows" do open and close over time so if she's showing signs you may want to go for it.