Potty training question.?

Question

All right, I like to consider myself a pretty good parent but my daughter is making me crazy. She will be 3 in a few months and is very self assured. She is very confident and very well spoken. But here is the thing, we have been working on potty training for a few months now and sometimes she will go and sometimes she does not want to be bothered with it. I have tried bribing her with small treats or prizes and sometimes it works and sometimes she says no thanks I don't want any. I know that she knows when she has to go, because if she doesn't feel like it she will hide and lie about it. I do not want to punish her for it but I am not sure where else to go with this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I have 4 children, ages 27, 25, 22, and 9. I also have been a child care provider in my home for 20 years. I have potty trained a lot of children. When my 9 year old was 2 1/2, she seemed to be showing all the signs for potty training. We began, she hated everything about it. I let it go for a few months and tried again. I did this off and on until she 3 1/2. Any mention of the potty sent her in to a fit. I tried every trick I knew plus a few that were hopeless failures (trying to "force" her to sit made her become as stiff as a board). I thought I was about as experienced with potty training as anyone could be, but I was wrong. When she was just past 4 years old, I asked her, very exasperated, in a moment of frustration, WHEN was she going to be potty trained? She was thoughtful a couple seconds and said, "When I am 5 I will go potty in the toilet." Well...at least we had a goal! So, we made potty training a non-issue. I moved the diapers, pull-ups, big-girl panties into the bathroom. She decided what she wanted to wear (usually pull-ups). Once in a while she would urinate in the toilet (usually before bath time). She changed her own wet pull-ups. I took my sweet time cleaning her up when she had a bowel movement. 2 weeks to the day before she turned 5, she got up in the morning and said, "Today I am going potty in the toilet." She day and night trained all in one day, both urine and BM. It was the strangest case of potty training I have ever come across. Since then I have successfully potty trained 4 more daycare children, all around 3 years old, so I know it wasn't anything I was doing. It seems to be just a part of her personality to take a long time to get used to a new thing and she wants to be the one who decides when she does it. We learned early in parent-hood to "pick our battles", but our youngest gives us quite the challenge. My suggestion is to let the potty issue go for a few weeks and see what her leading is.

Answer 2

Set your toddler on the potty seat, fully clothed, once a day — after breakfast, before her bath, or whenever else she's likely to have a bowel movement. This will help her get used to the potty and accept it as part of her routine. If there's not an easily accessible bathroom around, bring your child's portable potty outside, to the playroom, or wherever your toddler may be.

Once she's fine with this routine, have her sit on the potty bare-bottomed. Again, let her get used to how this feels. At this point, let her know that this is what Mommy and Daddy (and any older siblings) do every day. That is, taking off your pants before you use the bathroom is a grown-up thing to do.

If sitting on the potty with or without clothes is upsetting to your toddler, don't push it. Never restrain her or physically force her to sit there, especially if she seems scared. It's better to put the potty aside for a few weeks before trying again. Then, if she's willing to sit there, you know she's comfortable enough to proceed.


Show your toddler the connection between pooping and the toilet. The next time she poops in her diaper, take her to the potty, sit her down, and empty the diaper beneath her into the bowl. Afterward, let her flush if she wants to (but don't force her if she's scared) so she can watch her diaper contents disappear.

You also may want to pick up a few potty-training picture books or videos for your toddler, which can assist her in taking in all this new information. Everyone Poops, by Taro Gomi, is a perennial favorite, as well as Uh Oh! Gotta Go! and Once Upon a Potty, which even comes in a version with a doll and miniature potty.

Keeping a book like this in the bathroom, or a poster or flipbook that illustrates the steps in using the potty, can help your toddler get familiar with the process and relate it to what she does in the bathroom.

Don't give away that stash of diapers just yet. Even when your child is consistently clean and dry all day, it may take several more months, or even years, for her to stay dry all night. At this age, her body is still too immature to wake her up in the middle of the night reliably just to go to the bathroom.

When you're ready to embark on night training, your toddler should continue to wear a diaper or pull-up to bed, but encourage her to use the potty if she has to pee or poop during the night. Tell her that if she wakes up in the middle of the night needing to go, she can call you for help. You can also try putting her potty near her bed so she can use it right there.

If she manages to stay dry for five nights in a row, it's a good time to start nighttime training in earnest. Put a plastic sheet under the cloth one to protect the mattress, and put your toddler to bed in underwear (or nothing) and see how it goes.

There's not much you can do to help things along, short of limiting liquids before bedtime, so if your toddler doesn't seem to get the hang of it, put her back in nighttime diapers and try again in a few months.

Answer 3

Get her some training panties. Take her out of diapers and pull ups completely. Take her to the bathroom every hour even if she says that she does not have too. If she pees or poopies in her panties, make her change her own clothes. She will get tired of changing her clothes and just go on the potty all of the time. You will have a little bit more laundry to do but it is worth it. It worked for my son. He was trained within a week! Good Luck!

Answer 4

You can purchase a potty seat he can use at the grownup potty, or you'll be able to make him use the baby. Either means you'll be able to usually must keep in the toilet with him till he is going for the primary few months of potty coaching. Don't count on him to be ready to head in there and care for it himself. Grab a booklet and plant your self till he is going. Don't make it annoying. You can present a gift of a few form if he makes use of both potty (like 2 m&m's). Be sufferer although he isn't and do not fear. Training takes time.

Answer 5

bathroom in a toliet. Just relax and let nature takes it's course. My son is 3 in 3 months and he just recently started telling me that he notices peeing and pooping in his pull up. I try not to stress about it and just gently mention it throughout the day. My sister just told her son one day that "today is the day we buy big boy pants" like it was a regular thing and then she started putting underwear on him instead of pullups and he trained really fast. (he was only 2) I think that the more your kids feel pressured the more they can use not going as a power tool for themselves to feel in control. But like my mom always says. Do you wear pull ups now? Did you wear them in school? That would be a no so just look at it that way. Everything in its time. Going to the bathroom is an uncomfortable thing...even as an adult don't think? Think how hard it is for her.

Answer 6

Have a potty party, have your friend call and pretend to be your child's favorite character, like Dora The Explorer, Cinderella, Snow White, etc... I had my brother call & pretend to be Bob The Builder and tell him how wonderful he was doing. Always clap, even when nothing happens. You have to make this a BIG DEAL! Make them feel like going potty is SO MUCH FUN ((*_*))
After a few days, that is all that they will want to do!
Good Luck!!!

Answer 7

I would agree, big girl underwear will help, my son was almost the same, he knew how to go but if he was wearing pullups and he was in the middle of playing w/ something he almost looked at it as he was wearing a diaper( Oh well I pooped my pants...mom or dad will get it later!) So try the underwear and you might catch your self washing a few pairs but it'll be worth it.

Answer 8

If you have her in pullups, that might be the problem. Too much like a diaper. I would put her in regular 'big girl underwear', cotton, and let her know the pulls ups/diapers are gone. That's it.

If she wets, talk about how yucky that feels, and let her sit in it for a few minutes (she won't die, just feel uncomfortable).

Talk about how good the underwear feel when they are clean an dry.

For my daughter, we put a blank sheet of paper on the wall, and everytime she peed she got to put a sticker on the poster, everytime she pooped she got to put two. She loved it. For my son (stickers didn't work), he got 1 M&M for pee and 2 for poop. (he didn't get them any other time).

Got to regular underwear, and let her feel a bit uncomfortable. I'll bet that helps. Good luck!

Answer 9

Let her go to the store and pick out her favorite character panties and get her a piggy bank . So every time she goes to the potty and pees she gets a quarter,poo gets 50 cents.Let her look at toy r us paper and tell her when she saves enough money she will get to go to the store and buy a toy.

Answer 10

Here is a good site!