potty training tips?

suicidegirl

suicidegirl

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I've been trying to potty train my 3 yr old son without any luck so I'm resorting to this forum for help and tips.

how did you potty train your children? how long did it take you? any useful tips?

I have a wee potty seat that goes over the toilet and my son kicks/freaks out every time I try to put him on it. I also have tried to put him in underwear and amazingly, he manages to stay dry for an extended period of time. I've even tried saying "honey, don't you want to be a big boy?" and he likes to retort with "I'm a little boy... I don't want to grow up"

I've heard of putting cereal in the toilet and having the boy aim at the cereal, but is that effective? I do wonder about teaching my son how to pee while standing up, because obviously, I don't own a penis.
 
Awww how cute of your son saying that he doesn't want to grow up :)

When I potty trained my 2 daughters (last one is now 3 and a half) I put training pants or pull up diapers on them and had a potty seat over the toilet seat. Every morning when they wake up I take them to the bathroom to sit them on the toilet. I don't have boys but I do have nephews. It seemed to me that boys take longer with their potty training than the girls :dunno:
Hope someone here who has boys will be more of a help to you :)
 
You need to put cotton briefs on him. He will learn how wet his pants are. Give him a day or two then provide him a pull-up diaper. You may not force him for the potty training. All you have to do is let him on his own.

We had to be paitence with our 2 years old daughter. Guess what, she went to the bathroom and sat on the adult seat. I assume that she does not like a kid seat. I can understand why she does not like be pressurized from us.
 
Boys DO take longer. I have a 6 yr old nephew, and almost 5yo neice. My nephew didn't completely potty train until he was almost 4.5. My neice was totally trained by the time she was 3yo.

My nephew was partially trained for the last year before he finally fully trained. He would pee pee in the potty, but poopy in his diaper. We figured out that he was afraid of the toilet flush. He thought HE was going to go down with the water, and it frightened him badly. His father took him into the bathroom with him to show him that you wouldn't go down with the water. We let him flush the toilet, and he eventually, realized he was safe. It took awhile, though.
 
Mookie said:
You need to put cotton briefs on him. He will learn how wet his pants are. Give him a day or two then provide him a pull-up diaper. You may not force him for the potty training. All you have to do is let him on his own.

We had to be paitence with our 2 years old daughter. Guess what, she went to the bathroom and sat on the adult seat. I assume that she does not like a kid seat. I can understand why she does not like be pressurized from us.
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It was the same with my niece and nephew. Neither child used a "kiddie potty". They both wanted to use the "big potty".
 
My son was umm almost 3...about 4 months before he turned 3. I trained him in underwear. (Let your son pick out favorites such as thomas or spongebob or spiderman etc) he got it by 2nd or 3rd month. He still wears pull up at bedtimes only. He did so well! Even we were on vacation for 3 weeks he did really well beside the poop part. After we returned home he stopped poop in undies and straight to potty. He hated the small potty and prefer on toilet. He taught himself stand up and went potty. He learned that from his daddy. :)

Soo all kids are different! I am sure your boy will get it. I had to train my son because one of his pre school must be diaper free. I told him do you want go school and he said yes. Then please do your best to go bathroom. It is hard but we made it through.

He is trained for 4 months. I've heard some kids trained from one day to months and months. So kids are different.

So good luck!
 
We're in the same process with out 4-y.o. daughter.

Obviously, summer-time is a good time. to do this.

We noticed that "asking" if she wants to the toilet doesn't help.
She'll have no problem to be told. So we do that. We tell her to goto the toilet, and that way she has fewer accidents.

Now, she's in Holland on vacation, excellent weather, swimming pool. So we don't want her going in the house all wet. So there's a little plastic potty outside which she happily uses.
In fact, the "us telling her to pee" is over and she handles itself.

Otherwise, with our second child..... bribary helped real well.
First she got a candy when she used the toilet.
After a week, she got a candy at the end of the day.
(Now... she doesn't get candy any more..... she's 7 now :) )
 
Oceanbreeze said:
Boys DO take longer. I have a 6 yr old nephew, and almost 5yo neice. My nephew didn't completely potty train until he was almost 4.5. My neice was totally trained by the time she was 3yo.
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Yea, both my girls were fully potty trained by the time they were 2 and a half years old. I noticed that my nephews were older when they were fully potty trained.
 
suicidegirl said:
I've heard of putting cereal in the toilet and having the boy aim at the cereal, but is that effective? I do wonder about teaching my son how to pee while standing up, because obviously, I don't own a penis.
Click to expand...

My mom was a special ed teacher for 20 years and that's how they potty trained their kids was put fruit loops or cherios in the toliet and than they got points and toys for aimming correctly
 
I had a very hard time training my son too. Boys do take longer. I tried about 6 times to get him trained and nothing worked. I knew I was going to be home with him for 5 days straight during 4th of July week, so I figured that would be the best time. He was 3 years, 4 months. A few weeks before then I kept telling him to pick what kind of underwear he wanted. He said Thomas, Spiderman, Scooby Doo. So we went underwear shopping. He was so excited. He wanted to wear the underwear but I told him he had to wait a little longer. I said you have to try and keep your pull ups dry first. He also saw a special 3 pack train set for Thomas he wanted. I told him when we can leave the house with his underwear on, we will go straight to the store and buy these special trains. So day 1... when he got up in the morning we wore underwear. He had 5 accidents that day, but I didn't yell. I said, that's ok, we just have to change. As much as I was getting tired of changing, I knew I had to remain calm. I also made sure my husband wasn't home!! At night he wore pullups, I was not about to tackle that yet! Over the next few days he had accidents, but mostly he couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. I reminded him every 15 minutes to use the bathroom. He started getting very frustrated with me because I kept asking if he had to go. Finally on the 4th day, I gave in a little and stopped asking so much. On the 5th day, we went out with underwear. He was so excited to go to the store. As soon as we got there, he had to go to the bathroom. So we went at the store, then he picked out his trains. He told the cashier why he was getting these special trains. I made such a big deal about how proud I was. I think this time worked because he was ready and I stayed calm through the accidents. I think all the other times, I was more tense and he felt more pressure. Also giving him some incentive definetly helped!! Now he is a little over 4 and he doesn't need pull ups at night anymore. That took some time, but I let him decide when he had enough of pullups. He has been dry at night for 6 months!

Good luck. I know it's hard. I also think once you make the decision to try underwear don't go back to pullups. I hope some of this helps.
 
My son was potty trained within a month! And he was 2 and half at the time, he is 3.5 yrs old now. A professional at my son's daycare mentioned that she doesnt believe in pull ups, I forgot why, but I think the training is taking long if you use them, it doesnt work or something. Its best to use underwear and take your son to bathroom every hour asking him if he needs to go pee or poo, he might feel the need to go and realizes what bathroom is for. My son had several accidents, he was uncomfortable but at least he realized he needed to use bathroom instead of wetting his pant. He learned pretty fast!
 
everyone- thanks for the great and helpful tips.

we did get pea (his nickname) thomas the tank engine underwear, along with some spiderman underwear... it seemed to motivate him, but I don't think he's made the connection between the differences of underwear and diapers.

patience is a virtue after all ;)
 
we're also in the process right now of training my little cousin and he got hulk and spiderman underwear and the way we are getting him is "you don't wanna pee on the hulk do you cause you like the hulk and he says no and than goes the the bathroom. and don't worry sgirl it took him about a week to realize the difference between diapers and underwear
 
We had our son daytime trained by 14 months old. He had bowel troubles when he was younger than 14 months, so when he started to strain to go BM, we would put him on a potty ring on the regular toilet. It really helped him to be sitting down to go. Soon after we started this, he would go wet potty on the toilet as well. This sure did cut down on the number of diapers that we used.

We did the same thing with our daughter when she was 10 months old. She is now 2, and is fully trained - day and night - with a few accidents once in a while. We do put her in training pants at night (cotton diaper with a rubber outside) just in case, but she has been dry almost every night. We are very close to putting her in regular panties at night and see what happens. My daughter will even get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and pull down her pajamas and training pants and go potty by herself on the potty chair that we keep in the bathroom. She is too grown up!

With both kids, we would give them a Tic Tac if they went potty on the toilet when we first started training, but we are done with that now. It reallys seemed to motivate them to want to go on the potty rather than in their diaper.
 
I potty training my daughter at 2.5. I start training her during the day first but she was still wearing pull up at night. When she got used to the potty training and i start on night. Night time training was worst as she couldn't hold in and wet the bed. So, i had to call her up at 11pm and bring her to the tiolet and then again at 3am and again at 7am. i did that for two weeks solid. Now she have been off her nappies for nearly a year. It all take time!! :)
 
The problem is waiting too long in the first place. All you have to do is look back at what people used to do before disposable diapers---kids were all trained by one year old. AMAZING the motivation of not having to clean extra cloth diapers.

Also, when babies are started in the early months, they are not being forced to "unlearn" behavior they have been repeating for years. Nor can they run away from the situation, and at that point it's all positive anyway.

This sounds (hilariously) really radical now, but it has been done forever until recent years. You can research it even by reading old (1929-60's) Parents magazines, for example.

Mookie is right though---lose the pampers or pull-ups or whatever.

And make sure when he goes in the potty, you jump 15 feet in the air (at least) with happiness, sing, dance, celebrate, the whole bit--he'll want to repeat that.

Ughh 3 and 4 year olds in diapers---that's not good for anybody.
 
2kids1hoh said:
I had a very hard time training my son too. Boys do take longer. I tried about 6 times to get him trained and nothing worked. I knew I was going to be home with him for 5 days straight during 4th of July week, so I figured that would be the best time. He was 3 years, 4 months. A few weeks before then I kept telling him to pick what kind of underwear he wanted. He said Thomas, Spiderman, Scooby Doo. So we went underwear shopping. He was so excited. He wanted to wear the underwear but I told him he had to wait a little longer. I said you have to try and keep your pull ups dry first. He also saw a special 3 pack train set for Thomas he wanted. I told him when we can leave the house with his underwear on, we will go straight to the store and buy these special trains. So day 1... when he got up in the morning we wore underwear. He had 5 accidents that day, but I didn't yell. I said, that's ok, we just have to change. As much as I was getting tired of changing, I knew I had to remain calm. I also made sure my husband wasn't home!! At night he wore pullups, I was not about to tackle that yet! Over the next few days he had accidents, but mostly he couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. I reminded him every 15 minutes to use the bathroom. He started getting very frustrated with me because I kept asking if he had to go. Finally on the 4th day, I gave in a little and stopped asking so much. On the 5th day, we went out with underwear. He was so excited to go to the store. As soon as we got there, he had to go to the bathroom. So we went at the store, then he picked out his trains. He told the cashier why he was getting these special trains. I made such a big deal about how proud I was. I think this time worked because he was ready and I stayed calm through the accidents. I think all the other times, I was more tense and he felt more pressure. Also giving him some incentive definetly helped!! Now he is a little over 4 and he doesn't need pull ups at night anymore. That took some time, but I let him decide when he had enough of pullups. He has been dry at night for 6 months!

Good luck. I know it's hard. I also think once you make the decision to try underwear don't go back to pullups. I hope some of this helps.
Click to expand...


Just about the same we did.. Yes.. very important dont be so tense or yell when Allen have accidents.. I just say.. "oh dang" lets try this.. try go potty soon other wise we will be running out of underwear..
But he was still having those accidents, so I got cooking timer.. I set for 15 min.. I told him.. if you hear beep beep.. you go bathroom to make sure you dont wet your underwear again.. it worked..

before that, it was struggle because he had fear of going in bathroom because of other old house have spa in bathtub, my other son was playing and pushed the button, Allen scared his butt off.. and refused to go in for almost 1 year and half, gave him sponge bath till his time up to have potty training, first break his fear in bathroom then potty trained.. it works.. (Marsha my little one always bath in kitchen sink cuz shes so tiny but decided to bath her in tub, that lured Allen in.. and dog too.. thats how ) :)
 
I have been pottytraining my 3 year old, Kieran. He's been wearing undies for almost 3 weeks now, all I did was simply explain to him what he was supposed to do, and if he wants to wear those batman, spiderman, CARS and spongebob undies, he has to stay dry and go to the bathroom on the potty..So far he did well and of course, had a few accidents last week but did very well this week, no accidents so far. He even stays dry at night. I keep the portable potty beside his bed in case he has to go. It's going well so far.. will work on him going to the bathroom with the potty seat that goes over the toilet seat. Right now, I don't trust him in the bathroom because he has caused the toilet to flood up a few times putting stuff in there and got ahold of some stuff in the bathroom. :ugh:
 
TRUST ME... I did EVERYTHING to potty train my now 3 yrs old son!! Turned out that you are suppose to let him potty on his own naturally because its work that way! It worked on my son! At first i was like huh no! i need to to have him potty trained! His pre school teacher said noo.. let him go on his own and I wasnt sure if I should take her advice but I decided I took her advice and all suddenly it worked!!! So let him be! he will eventually did it! :) Patience with him all i can say
 
Iceriver said:
My son was potty trained within a month! And he was 2 and half at the time, he is 3.5 yrs old now. A professional at my son's daycare mentioned that she doesnt believe in pull ups, I forgot why, but I think the training is taking long if you use them, it doesnt work or something. Its best to use underwear and take your son to bathroom every hour asking him if he needs to go pee or poo, he might feel the need to go and realizes what bathroom is for. My son had several accidents, he was uncomfortable but at least he realized he needed to use bathroom instead of wetting his pant. He learned pretty fast!
Click to expand...
yes they dont believe in pull up because they think its ok to pee in their underwear. it will put them off longer to learn how to pee in the toilet instead of pee in the pull up..
 
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