Potty Traning

laurin2010
laurin2010 Posts: 65
in Chit-Chat
This weekend we will start potty training! My son is two and so ready to start, any suggestions to make this as easy as possible? All i got is the sink the cheerio idea lol!! HELP PLEASE :)
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Replies

  • OnionMomma
    OnionMomma Posts: 938 Member
    Use M&Ms as an incentive!! Good luck!!
  • meeksfour
    meeksfour Posts: 59 Member
    Go for it! Everyone told me boys are harder to train, but both boys were done in about two weeks and ready for the world in about a month. Also, both boys were around 2 years and 3-4 months. (Now they are 5 1/2 and 3) My tricks, go bold and go straight to underwear, big boy panties, no training pants at all. I think this confuses them, also if the get wet they do not like it. I also set a timer and made a big deal about going every hour, if we were playing outside in the yard I let them go outside on the bushes. They like this, a boy thing, and it helps them to see what is happening and train faster. Oh, and in the age of technology when ever they went poop in the potty the would send a pic of them smiling next to the toilet via text to their dad... Again a boy thing but it worked.

    High fives and stickers helped, make a big deal every time. When they get to the point of venturing out of the house, please take them to public restrooms ASAP. The loud noises and other people are a bit distracting, but if you make it part of the deal they will get used to it fast. Now my boys think its fun to go in every one they can find, me not so much I have enough purell for the world lol.

    Oh, no liquids an hour before bedtime and read your books then potty one last time before bedtime and rush them to the potty in the am and do the happy dance when he has been dry all night. If needed, get him up one last time to potty before you goto sleep, use a nightlight no big lights so he will learn he can navigate by himself if needed later.

    Have fun!
  • macpatti
    macpatti Posts: 4,280 Member
    Think of it like house training a dog. You don't wait for him to tell you he needs to go at first; just take him. Have some M&M's (or his favorite treat) in a jar on the back of the toilet. If he goes, reward him with his treat and a sticker. Praise, praise, praise and never scold.

    I never used Pull-Ups. We went straight from pamper to "big boy" underwear. They need to feel wet to understand. Hopefully, they won't like that feeling and will try to avoid it.

    Be patient. Good luck!
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    You guys have given great advice, I will take everything you have all said and apply it to this mission lol!! I do intend on going straight to big boy undies also so I guess I am going down the right path! Again, thank you all :):)
  • LeenaRuns
    LeenaRuns Posts: 1,309 Member
    Bump. My kiddo's almost there.
  • Wabbit05
    Wabbit05 Posts: 434 Member
    We "started" a while ago... More like here's a potty and use it when you like. My 2 year 3 month old does ask to go, but usually AFTER she already did in her diaper. The chocolate treat incentive really helps. She's all about the M&Ms!

    Not totally successful but at least she is getting familiar with it.
  • mattack
    mattack Posts: 137 Member
    My son likes going outside and "peeing on flowers"
  • jocelynna
    jocelynna Posts: 137 Member
    We are going to start this weekend as well...our son is 2-1/2 and appears to be ready to start. Good luck this weekend! Thank you everyone for the advice!
  • jenluvsushi
    jenluvsushi Posts: 933 Member
    My little girl will be 2 next month and I am so excited for her to start trying...she has a potty chair and she has used it twice already but seems resistent to doing it anymore. Not sure why but I'm not pressuring her. I hope she changes her mind soon....she has recently started emptying the contents of her diaper occasionaly (HORROR) and I am soooo over it! I'm hoping that maybe a sign she is ready?
  • Alex_is_Hawks
    Alex_is_Hawks Posts: 3,499 Member
    if you are old enough to be on this website, you should know how to go by yourself by now...

    jus sayin....
  • stephanieb72
    stephanieb72 Posts: 390 Member
    My son is 2 years and 4 months. I think we will be there in the next month or so.
    My other son (now 15) was super easy to potty train. My daughter (now 13) was much harder.
    I am not looking forward to the frantic search for a potty while driving in the middle of nowhere ;) Good times lol!
  • awillkies
    awillkies Posts: 53 Member
    we have a boy too. he was around same age when he started too! we went bare bottom for about a week- put the potty right in the middle of the living room. no underwear, no diaper nothing during the day. m & m's and stickers & tons of huge postive celebration worked really well, my son responded to this postively. then we slowly wiened off the candy & big fuss. kept the stickers as rewards but made less & less a big deal & sort of casual. then when we felt he was ready, we moved the potty into the bathroom. also we trained him sitting down 1st then when he again showed interest his daddy taught him how to stand & pee! they love that!

    oh and don't pressure i think. if your son regresses too much, back off slightly. be firm but very gentle. it's a hard skilll for them to learn! also we found it helps to keep the bathroom door open so he could always watch both of us. we were very honest but matter of fact about the whole thing. now (he's turning 4) we are night training (going well) & starting to talk about privacy.

    hope this helps! good luck!!!!
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    haha love that, im all for peeing outside it is a boy thing!
  • NavyKnightAh13
    NavyKnightAh13 Posts: 1,394 Member
    bump....i know my little one isn't ready yet, but he is also starting to get where he doesn't want mom changing his diaper and not really wanting to have one on and he is 6 and a 1/2 months old. The reason i am bumping it is this way i can come back and get advice on potty training.
  • devil_in_a_blue_dress
    devil_in_a_blue_dress Posts: 5,214 Member
    If he doesn't catch on, don't be afraid to back off. I started to train my daughter at 2. She just was not ready -- I don't think she could feel when she had to urinate. She'll be 3 in October and we started trying again week or so go and it's going much better.
  • Ange03063
    Ange03063 Posts: 55 Member
    My son is 3 and I can finally say he's potty trained! WOO HOO! My hubby and I have struggled with this for over 6 months. The first thing I will tell you is that it's absolutely true what they say. It's so much harder to train boys. My son for the longest time could have cared less if he peed or pooped in his pull-up. To get my son used to sitting on the potty, my hubby and I created a little reward chart. Every time he peed on the potty he got a smiley face. A poop got two. He could also earn a smiley face for saying he had to go on his own without prompting. After so many smiley faces, he got a train. (Feel free to plug in any type of toy you feel will motivate your son.) Once he got in the swing of sitting on the potty and actually putting something in there, we put ourselves on lockdown for a weekend and just had him in big boy underwear. No pull-ups. He hated being being wet. After 3 days (had to continue through Monday), we were good to go. Cameron has had a couple of accidents, but he's been really good about stopping himself when he starts to pee both times.

    I also agree with the M&Ms. We used that trick because Cameron was petrified of using the "big" potty and would only use the little baby Bjorn potty.

    Best of luck and be patient!
  • Mina133842
    Mina133842 Posts: 1,573 Member
    with my oldest, we started at about 2, and he had a harder time training with #2, than with #1. We put up a calendar, and every #1 was a star or small sticker (the $1 store is a great place to find these!) and for every #2 he got a chocolate treat (M&Ms or Hershey Kiss) and a COOL BIG sticker for the bathroom calendar- the smaller #1 stickers went on the calendar in the kitchen, but we got a Cars calendar at the $1 store for the "poop" calendar. I did use pullups at night, but he was mostly sleeping through the night dry when we were successfully potty training. When we first started, he relapsed, and I did use pullups, but the underwear thing helps so much more, it's not like a diaper, and he was so excited to pick out his big boy underwear- since I still have a little guy, I did have a diaper bag with a spare set of undies for him in there with a spare pair of pants, just in case, but haven't used them yet!

    We started with a little Elmo potty chair that converts to a step stool and also had the removable top part that you could place directly on the "big" toilet, and I think that helped, he could even load his chair on top of it.
  • Crochetluvr
    Crochetluvr Posts: 3,328 Member
    Use M&Ms as an incentive!! Good luck!!

    ^^^^This is exactly what I did. I got it from an old book called "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day"...and it worked. My son was trained in one day.
  • PhotogNerd
    PhotogNerd Posts: 420 Member
    You're in luck, boys are so much easier to potty train.
  • kinsellae
    kinsellae Posts: 167 Member
    Don't use pull ups let them go comando, try not to leave the house for the first few days, have him drink lots of water and take them don't ask if they need to every 30 min. once they get the hang of it every hour should be good. Make a HUGE deal when they go!! And have everyone in the house take part in congratulating for good work! Just potty trained my 2 year old. 3 days of peeing herself but after that an occasional accident and the last one was about a month ago :)
  • tmanfromtexas
    tmanfromtexas Posts: 928 Member
    For boys, just make them run around naked, in about 2 days they will ask to go.
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    Use M&Ms as an incentive!! Good luck!!

    ^^^^This is exactly what I did. I got it from an old book called "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day"...and it worked. My son was trained in one day.

    wow one day!! that would be amazing!!
  • lisitabonita
    lisitabonita Posts: 81 Member
    I have potty trained about 40 children. I have been a preschool teacher and nanny for years. I think the thing to remember is to set them up for success. I suggest diapering at night and nap until they get the feel of underwear. You have to remember that a diaper and underwear feel very different against his penis and it can stimulate urine in sleep or at play. You may find that he dribbles here and there and that will stop when he get used to the fabric. Sit on the pot every 30 minutes, don;t go anywhere, and if you do, bring lots of pants :) Good luck!
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    You're in luck, boys are so much easier to potty train.

    so happy to hear that i have heard exact opposite!! I am hopefull :)
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    I have potty trained about 40 children. I have been a preschool teacher and nanny for years. I think the thing to remember is to set them up for success. I suggest diapering at night and nap until they get the feel of underwear. You have to remember that a diaper and underwear feel very different against his penis and it can stimulate urine in sleep or at play. You may find that he dribbles here and there and that will stop when he get used to the fabric. Sit on the pot every 30 minutes, don;t go anywhere, and if you do, bring lots of pants :) Good luck!

    Hey thanks!! great advice I really appreciate that I would have never known!
  • samandlucysmum
    samandlucysmum Posts: 320
    In my experience, there is no perfect way to do it, every child is different. My older 4 trained on a potty, the younger 2 trained on the loo. My younger son started training after 3yrs, it took a while, and now at 4 1/2, he is dry during the day, except when he is gaming, then he loses concentration, he is in pull ups at night. My youngest daughter was dry by 3, she used the loo too, she was scared too to start with, and had to have someone go with her eacg time, but she grew out of it after a few weeks, and now she is dry, both day and night.

    Good luck with it, try to avoid food rewards, try a star chart, or a promise of special underwear or a new set of clothes or a toy, using food will teach him to use food as a reward, and that will carry on into adulthood, hence us being on MFP.
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    if you are old enough to be on this website, you should know how to go by yourself by now...

    jus sayin....

    ??talking about potty training a 2 year old what are you talking about?
  • lukeout007
    lukeout007 Posts: 1,237 Member
    You should be aware that it could be more difficult than expected (though hopefully not).

    My son is 3 1/2 and we've been trying to potty train him for nearly 6 months. At first he just refused, then he started dabbling...but wouldn't really get on board.

    Then we got the idea to give him a sticker every time he went potty and then reward him with a toy for every 10 stickers....he did fantastic with that....Soon we had to up the sticker requirement to 15 and 20 just to keep from going broke...

    But then when we stopped doing that because we felt he was potty trained more or less...he stopped going in the potty. So since then it's been a constant fight....Now he uses the potty exclusively at home. He hasn't peed his pants (outside of sleeping) in a couple of months. But we can't get him to tell us when he needs to go potty when we're out. Even if he's at my moms house he won't tell anyone. He'll just pee his pants.

    It's less frustrating than it was 3 or 4 months ago....but it's still a bit frustrating. He's getting too old to be in pull-ups (in my opinion) and honestly I don't want to keep paying for them.
  • laurin2010
    laurin2010 Posts: 65
    You should be aware that it could be more difficult than expected (though hopefully not).

    My son is 3 1/2 and we've been trying to potty train him for nearly 6 months. At first he just refused, then he started dabbling...but wouldn't really get on board.

    Then we got the idea to give him a sticker every time he went potty and then reward him with a toy for every 10 stickers....he did fantastic with that....Soon we had to up the sticker requirement to 15 and 20 just to keep from going broke...

    But then when we stopped doing that because we felt he was potty trained more or less...he stopped going in the potty. So since then it's been a constant fight....Now he uses the potty exclusively at home. He hasn't peed his pants (outside of sleeping) in a couple of months. But we can't get him to tell us when he needs to go potty when we're out. Even if he's at my moms house he won't tell anyone. He'll just pee his pants.

    It's less frustrating than it was 3 or 4 months ago....but it's still a bit frustrating. He's getting too old to be in pull-ups (in my opinion) and honestly I don't want to keep paying for them.

    I fear my son may be a bit like this BUT i wont know until I try, so thank you for letting me in on this I very much appreciate it :)
  • MtnKat
    MtnKat Posts: 714
    We did the sticker things for all the kids as a reward. All 4 of my children are potty trained.

    I would avoid using M & M's or food as a reward....that just sets up your child to view food as a reward and not fuel for your body like it should be.

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