I have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter that I have been potty training for 2 weeks now. We were doing well with incremental steps for the first 5 days. She was holding it longer and longer and, toward the end of those 5 days, she started and completed #1 on the potty three times.
But since last Saturday she has refused to go on the potty, throwing temper tantrums and demanding her diaper back. My sense is that fighting her isn't going to help, but I don't know what my next step should be. I've heard that once you take off the diapers and start training, the worst thing you can do is stop. I've also heard that if it isn't working, you should take a break and start again in a couple weeks. From your personal experience, has anyone who stopped found it advantageous or disastrous to do so? Does anyone who kept going when they hit a road block, have any advice for plowing through?
This is a long "so what happened," but I hope my experience will help others.
Based on advice received here, I gave her back her diaper. But as a few of you suspected, I was anxious for her to be potty trained because she needed to be potty trained for school in September. Consequently, 2 weeks later I tried the "bare bottom" method. Holy Cow, did that work! I had heard people mention it before, but nobody told me how fantastically effective it could be!
The first day was tough. I read that you reward even a drop that makes it into the potty because of gravity, and that's what I did. She held it for 5 hours, and then peed on the kitchen floor. I put her on the potty and a little drop hit the potty. I pointed out that little drop, hooped and hollered, and gave her a little present. Well, that did it; now she was motivated. Later that night she sat on the potty in front of the TV and tinkled in the potty without noticing. We praised and rewarded her again, and she has never looked back.
By the end of 3 days, my daughter was going to the potty without even being told. I would catch her getting up from a fun activity and heading to the potty without even letting me know that's where she was going. I even found her dumping her own tinkle into the big toilet when she was done! Although she once in awhile got her underwear a little damp, she never had another full-blown accident, and by August was dry all the time.
We had some trouble with #2. At the end of the first week, she did #2 in the potty, and we thought we avoided that hurdle, but it was weeks before she would do it in the potty again. She would go #2 for the right prize, but if she wasn't that interested in what we were offering, she would go in her underwear. Then I bought the book IT HURTS WHEN I POOP. I highly recommend that book! She understands now that if she doesn't go she will get a tummy ache, and that if she drinks lots of water and eats the right types of food her poop won't be hard so she doesn't need to be afraid to go. She still sometimes starts in her underwear -- I'm not sure if she tries to push and doesn't make it to the potty on time or if it slips out before she knows she has to go -- but she makes every effort to get to the potty every time. And I would say half of the time, she makes it to the potty on time and actively pushes her poop out into the potty.
All I can say from my experience is this: My MIL tried to potty train my DS twice, with no luck. Months later, one morning he woke up and said he wants to wear big boy underpants. So he learned only when he was ready and when he wanted to, not when someone wanted him to.
That's an adult idea – that you should never allow backsliding. It simply doesn't hold up in light of many, many children I've observed over two generations.
Potty training can't happen until the child is physically ready, such as able to identify urges in time and know what they mean. And she must have the physical control to hold that sphincter tight until she gets to the potty. But in addition to that, a child MUST want to make that transition. Until the child "owns" the activity, you can't rightfully call them trained. Kids who are pushed faster than they are emotionally ready for tend to have accidents, backslide, be too distracted to use the potty every time, or even actively resisting the whole idea. So it sounds like your little girl is VERY close, but not on board emotionally yet.
It's okay to let her go back to diapers. Keep all potty messages positive. Point out how long it takes to change a diaper, and how quick it would be if she just used the potty. Romanticize the pretty panties she'll be able to wear. And let her decide.
When kids really are ready, they will be happy to make that developmental leap, just as when they learned to walk and to talk. They don't need more than occasional reminders (they do tend to get distracted by the game of the moment). They won't need bribes, threats, or prizes. They just decide to use the potty, and generally need only a few days of practice to learn how to avoid accidents.
I've known many kids who were allowed to return to diapers. In every case, they decided they wanted to use the potty a few days to a couple of months later. On the other hand, parents who keep insisting that their children "should" be ready or "were succeeding last month" often set themselves and their littles up for long, grueling months of training.
Good luck!
She's not ready.
And even if a child is older and already potty trained, accidents WILL happen. Childhood.
Even kids in Kindergarten have accidents.
Night time dryness is also something entirely different. Night time dryness, is a BIOLOGICAL occurrence, and it can even take until 7 years old, to attain.
It has nothing to do with, day time dryness.
My son is 4 and still wears a night time diaper for naps and night time.
He does NOT get all confused. He is potty trained. I explain to him, that his body is not dry yet at night. No biggie.
My daughter was 5 and still in night time diapers too, for night time.
Normal.
A kid does not get confused, about diapers on or off. My kids never did.
Is it really worth turning it into a power struggle? I would let her have the diaper and try again in a while. I am of the wait them out until they are ready philosophy. It is less of a fight but can be slow. My son is 5 and I introduced the potty at 2.5 and he wasn't in underwear for another year+. But I had a baby during that time and wasn't willing to work to train him if he wasn't on board with the process. He did eventually get trained and wasn't even the last one in his class. My daughter is also 2.5 now. She has successfully peed in the potty several times but I am not pushing it. She can try when we are home and not in a rush. I had to use pull ups for my son (he got too big for diapers) and they have some good uses (nights, outings, car trips). The overnight ones are better since the regular ones hold very little pee. Anyway, good luck.
Please accept my apologies if you have heard any of this before.... : - )
All kids are different... I have two.. they both did things their way at different times/paces.. etc. My daughter went #1 but refused #2 for months.. ... my son .. when he sat on the toilet it was as if it was on fire.. then one day .. i congratulated his friend for going potty ... he came home (he was 3.3) and went potty from that day on.
What worked: Allowing them ... at their own pace to choose what they wanted.. I don't like to be told what to do... my kids are the same as me... so I gave them freedom.
BUT... I did bribe (when i had to plow through,,, and i did this on my own my hub wasn't around to help...so i feel your pain) ... things they really wanted... my daughter was easy.. she wanted to swim in the adult pool... my son.. light up sneakers...
I also brought the potty outside so if the kids were playing they didn't have to stop.... ohhh and if you could have a friends child go and maybe your daughter see/observe in the most innocent of situations.. it does help!!!!
Hope this helps... I thought potty training was so hard.. but after it was all done.. .it actually wasn't so bad...
Good Luck! Go with the flow... (hehehe)
Peeing on the potty three times in a week really isn't training successfully, it's just the very beginning steps. However, if she's capable of using the potty, I dont' necessarily believe that she needs to want to. Kids have to do things that are expected behavior all the time, her moods and whims don't need to control this. If she wants her diapers back, put her in cloth diapers and continue taking her to the potty every hour and a half through the day. She'll have the diapers, and she wont' like how it feels when she's in sopping wet cloth after she pees, that'll give her some motivation.
Good luck.
If you feel you have to stop training because she is not ready (for whatever reason) then do it. Give it a few weeks or a month and start again. I had to do this when I was training my twin girls (they were almost 3 years old at the time). I didn't have a choice. The girls were doing pretty good with the training, then there was a major fire in our house (electrical problems). We ended up moving from one family members house to another until we found a place to finally settle down for a couple months while the house was being repaired. During all the moving I found it easier to just stop training for a while. Once we were back in our own house and everyone was settled in, we started the training over and had no problems. Within a month or so both girls were completely trained. And no one was traumatized by the interruption in training.
She is not ready. Just because she has gone on the potty and held it longer doesn't mean that SHE is ready. Trust me, one day, and I'm sure very soon, she will all of the sudden say she is ready. At around 18 months I bought my daughter a potty and many months she just played with it and hid her toys in it. At around 2 1/2, she would start to go on the potty occasionally but refused to wear underpants. Just about everyday I would ask her if she would like to go on the potty. If she said yes, great, I would help her. If she said no, I would say OK and let it go. Then one day, around her 3rd birthday, she pee'd and pooped on the potty, put on underpants and we haven't looked back. We have backed tracked with the pooping, however. She wears a pull-up for naps and bedtime and will poop in there instead of the potty. I just clean it up and remind her that we poop on the potty and she does every once in a while. I know that she will go back to pooping on the potty when she is ready. Just back off for a L. while and she will get back to it. You can't push something like this, your daughter has to make that decision.
Did she show signs of readiness before you began trying to train, like an interest in sitting on the potty, knowing the words for pee and poop, taking off her diapers, staying dry an hour or two, etc? Or are you trying to train her so she can go to preschool in the fall, have a new baby on the way...? Is the training intense or laid-back?
I'm not saying you can't go back, of course you can. But as you said she was making progress, so it WAS working, and I would keep trying. Sometimes they (toddlers) decide the novelty has worn off and want no more to do with the potty, but if you persevere they relent and go with it. I know the "if they're not ready they won't do it" theory, and I accept that to a degree, if they show signs i know they're ready. Control and knowledge will come.
I plowed through with my first son, at the same age as your daughter, who wanted to play rather than sit. He tried to demand his diapers (!) so I put them out of sight, then got rid of them. He wore underwear by day, and at night thick training pants and waterproof covers. And he learned.
My little guy now is 26 months and while it may seem early for some he has gone #1 every day, pooped yesterday and today and is on Day 5 of training (so maybe tomorrow the cookie crumbles, lol.) He did have an episode of trying to hold his poop today when he obviously needed to go, so I pressed down on his thighs firmly enough to spread his legs apart a little so he couldn't clench and he pooped immediately, and thankfully was very happy about it. (I have read enough on this site to know I don't want him developing habits that will cause him severe pain, trips to the doctor and having to rely on laxatives.) He is wanting to play when he should be sitting, so I sit with him and return him to the potty. I give him books, or put a DVD on and talk to him to distract him from focusing solely on the potty as I want him to be relaxed. He's thrown some tantrums, and I put him in his room for a couple of minutes (tantrums earn a time-out) and when he's done I return him to the potty so he doesn't think he's won the power struggle. And when he woke from his nap today HE asked to sit on the potty : )
Taking off the diapers, beginning training and never stopping is one philosophy. If you have the stamina to hang in there I say go for it. You don't need to force her, she may not go for a few days, but the consistency will show her this is how she now goes. If you prefer to wait, wait. If you're not happy she'll pick up on that. I wish you a successful adventure!
