Advice on when to potty train your toddler, getting started, tips for successful potty training with boys and girls and common potty training problems.Discuss potty training on our forums, right now! Or, post a comment below.Potty training is the process of teaching your toddler to recognise the feeling of needing to go to the toilet, and gain control of urine and bowel movements until he can reach a potty or toilet.
Children develop at different rates and you should only begin potty training when your child is ready. Before he can be trained, your toddler needs to be able to:
- Recognise the signals that mean he needs to go to the toilet and can tell you before it happens.
- Hold on for a short time until he gets to the potty or the toilet.
- Pull his pants and trousers up or down, though children may need help with difficult clothes for some time.
Most toddlers are not ready to potty train until after the age of two, particularly if they do not have an older sibling to copy. Even after they are trained it's not at all unusual for a four year old to have occasional, or more frequent accidents.
If you try training your child before they are two it may mean you have to keep reminding them to use the toilet at intervals during the day. If you leave training a little later until your child is ready the process will be easier and quicker.
Getting StartedInvolve your child in buying a potty and perhaps let them choose their potty with you. Leave the potty so your toddler can see it in the bathroom. At around eighteen months introduce your toddler to the potty. Try to let your child watch other children using the potty and let your toddler see you using the toilet.
When your child is about two, sit him on the potty from time to time, and give lots of praise if he 'uses' the potty. If your child regularly opens his bowels at about the same time each day, choose this moment to sit him on the potty.
It is often a good idea to start potty training in warm weather so your child can run around without pants, or just with a pair of cotton pants. You will need to remind your child regularly to tell you when he needs the potty.
Accidents will happen, do not get cross, simply clean up and tell him where the poo or the wee should go next time. Occasionally, let your toddler try the toilet, some children prefer it. You can put a child seat on your toilet and purchase a step up to it to make it easier. However children often want you to hold them on the toilet, even when they are proficient toilet users. Do not expect your child to be able to wipe his own bottom, most children need help with this for some time.
Tips for successful potty training- Choose a time to potty train when nothing else significant is happening in your toddler's life e.g. the arrival of a new baby or starting nursery.
- Give plenty of praise every time your toddler uses the potty or toilet.
- Choose a potty with your child.
- Dress your child in trousers or leggings that can be pulled down easily, preferably with elasticated waists.
- It is possible to skip the potty stage and use the toilet from the start.
- Trainer pants (disposable nappies that look and feel like pants) are ideal for trips away from home, but may confuse your child as they are so like nappies your child may forget the need to use the potty.
- Try to make sure using the potty is an enjoyable experience, try not to let it become associated with telling your child off.
- Do not get cross! Try to always remain calm, even if your toddler has made a mess. If accidents happen, remain sympathetic, your child will pick up on anxiety or frustration. It is so easy for a toddler to forget about the potty and the toilet. If accidents are making you irritable, leave training for a week or two and go back to nappies.
- Teach boys to use the potty sitting down at first. They can progress to standing up later
- You may wish to buy a potty training book, video, or chart, which deal with the issues in more detail.
- You can devise your own scheme to encourage your child with stickers or stars
- You could try giving your child other small rewards such as a piece of fruit, if you think it would encourage the process.
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Childminder situations - I am one so I do understand. Firstly there are a few things to help here. If your child uses a potty at home and likes their potty, take it with you to the childminders. Let your child see you do this so they know it's the same one. (eventually your childmider could buy one exactly the same) - it's amazing but a child will say 'where's MY potty'. Let them have their own. Again your minder could always make a special occassion of it and take your child to choose one to have at her/his house. One question is whether there are still children wearing nappies at your childminders? that might be one explanation.
If your child is doing well at home it's a great start - the rest will follow - you never know - it might simply be that your chiild isn't encouraged and supported enough in the other environments and left to wait too long as there are other children taking carers' attention away for the split second your child wants to wee. - just a thought!
Night time, would I still use nappies or pull ups although I am a bit unsure if I want to use pull ups/ they just look like nappies but I might have to budge and use them in the morning/evening whilst travelling in traffic.
Please all comments welcome, there is so much advice out there and very confused...
p.s. we are doing the reward scheme at the moment, doesn't seem to be working!!
Thank you
My daughter isn't the only child this has worked on, all of my friends did the same and every one of them by less than 2 years old was fully potty trained. Please mums and dads stop listening to rubbish advice. Start them young and they will know no difference, you wont damage them mentally in fact reading the posts here the older you start the more mental damage seems to be done. By the way now we don't even use a potty its always the toilet and no tantrums or screams and we don't have accidents. Why is it so difficult?
My son is just over 3 and has exactly the same issues as AllieStops mentioned. He will run round with no nappy or pants on fine, and wee and poo by himself no problems and tell us very proudly what he has done. But if you put him in pants, he usually does it in them !! He has started to pull his pants down and up when we get him dressed and sit him on the potty, but most of the time he will either sit on the potty in his pants and wee, or do it where he is sat. I dont know how we can help him to tell us when he needs it so we can help him, or get him to realise and pull his pants down and go himself.
After speaking with our son we have actualy discovered he is scared to use the "big toilets" because of the monsters ( toilet cleaner adverts ).
We have two other children who are eleven and nine who had no problems with toilet training.
We are now going to remove all traces of "the monsters" and try again.....fingers not legs crossed....
We have a dog - and a toddler. I have involved my kiddie with picking up dog poops. He sees that as quite normal and has a name for the dog poops - 'ag ags' .Before we moved to potty training (in the last day and a bit) I showed him his poops from the nappies - which he also calls ag-ags. The very first time I put him in pants and put the potty out, he went straight to it, did a number 1 and 2 and referred to the result as 'my ag-ags'. Hey presto.
I'll be reading this forum with interest cause he is pretty proud of his pee profficiency and reach.
frist time on here im so lost my lad will be four in april and the whole potty training business is just nt happening at all. any body got any ideas that can help me out??? i would be most thankfully