How long does it really take to potty train?
My toddler will sit on the potty and pee when cajoled. He knows when he needs to pee because he will grab his penis. But - he will not go pee when he needs to because he’d rather keep playing. Pee-soaked pants bother him not at all.
Poop…. He has no problems pooping on the floor, so I guess at least he’s not constipated?
This is my son. I bought oh crap. 99% of the book was useless to me, but the few parts I hadn’t read elsewhere were useful. Like some kids need you there, some hate you hovering. Nagging = resistance, and that you have to make it their thing because you can’t force them to pee or poop.
So we were at the point you are at from 25 months potty training day two until two months later when we quit. Sometimes if he was naked waste down he’d have a ton of successes and more often then not he just dgaf.
And I could no longer bend down to clean up. So we quit at the beginning of may and he was super happy.
Towards the end of June I bought oh crap, read it, asked my husband to read it in the next week so we could set a day to restart. Two days later my kid wouldn’t wear a diaper because he’s not little. So this time we had the motivation from his side. I was able to analyze his behaviour better and figured out - he doesn’t like nagging or hovering. He likes to be discreet but often needs a reminder to try because he’s busy playing. He doesn’t like being forced to stay on too long
Most important- he can hold it really well but doesn’t know how to consciously let go. So every hour or if he asks, we pull down his pants no underwear and put him on. If he asked or I know he needs to go, we find an activity that will help him relax- washing animals has been great and I’ve heard bubbles work for others.
I’d say he’s ahead of where he was in may and this was a July 2 declaration. No accidents at daycare, and very few since we figured out the pieces we were missing. Outings are still hard. Luckily he agreed to a diaper at the hospital.
But I see numbers from 3 days to a year.
It took our three year old 5-6 months. We used Oh Crap! and it was fine. Don’t listen to the science bits they sound dubious and are not cited.
The most important thing for us having a routine for potty checks. On wake up, before travel, after travel, before bath. He now self initiates for both poop and pee but will sometimes forget when he’s playing.
I forgot to say, but Oh Crap says no to sticker charts. But sticker charts really worked for us and I’ve seen them recommended by other potty training experts. Also the hot wheels reward recommended by @PDM to me when I was losing it. Thanks pal.
This was my kid. The very first day we did potty training one adult was with him like white on rice and the potty was within ten feet at all times. Towards the end of the day I stepped a few feet away to make a comment to Mr. Meer and when we turned around Kiddo had pooped in the potty. He was waiting till we weren’t looking.
Being fully without diapers was a year for us, but there were extenuating circumstances - he went to a special education classroom in the mornings so he could receive PT/OT/speech services several times a week, then he was put on a bus and went to a day care in the afternoons. We didn’t know how long he would be on the bus so we asked his teachers to put him in a pull up at the end of the day, then at day care the teachers were sometimes so busy he’d still be wearing the pull up two hours later (wet) when we picked him up. 
When school finally let out and he was at day care all day he magically didn’t need a pull up any more within a couple days. At home and on outings he was basically potty trained after some number of months. 6 maybe? Less? But it was definitely not a three day magical thing.
To this day (he just turned seven) we will remind him to use the potty before doing video games because otherwise he’ll start and get excited then realize he has to pee and sometimes not make it to the toilet in time and need new pants. I’ve also started to suspect he just loves wearing his pajama pants so it’s an excuse to change. 
How did you know you were ready for #2? What would you do diff in prep? Please note that I am not ready for sure and am not approaching ready. I am actually leaning no, but am still keeping an open mind because my life is not really currently the best for clear headed thinking.
We started actively doing the “oh crap” method in February. I didn’t buy the book, just used the techniques that I had read elsewhere on the internet. It has been 5 months and I would say at month 4-ish we thought she was totally daytime trained, just needing a pullup for nap and bedtime. She actually rarely uses the pullup during naptime, but we put it on just in case. We actually still put on a pullup “just in case” almost anytime we leave the house and just keep re-using it day after day since she doesn’t pee in it.
We did have a big regression a few weeks ago and she went a few days in a row having an accident every single pee. Like, she would either just keep playing and totally ignore that she was now soaking wet, or she would run to the potty and already be a little wet when she sat down, but then finish on the potty. Her OT said it didn’t sound like a normal regression so we went to the doctor to rule out all of the medical things, and then settled on it being a behavioral thing/regression. She recommended the sticker chart so we’ve been doing that for a few weeks. I thought we were totally back on track and now today she has had 2 accidents. The last one I heard her running, then yelling from the bathroom that she was using the potty. I went in to help and found her undies on the ground 10 feet away from the bathroom, a trail of pee to the bathroom, and she was so covered in pee that I put her in the shower for a rinse off. In the past few months we have also transitioned away from the separate little potty and now she uses the actual toilet with a step stool/seat combo. We do keep the little potty outside for when she is playing outside and needs to go.
So, we are 5 months out from starting and still having some accidents around here. Thankfully there hasn’t been a poopy accident since like, month 2. She always uses the potty for poo, no matter what.
Oh! And I posted it on here when I was in the throes of research but “fully potty trained “ actually includes accidents in the research definitions. Something like 1 poo or less a month and 1 pee or less a week? I could google but won’t. And any “big” event will throw it off
We were no longer living in one bedroom of a three bedroom house with extended family.
Actually we were trying before then, and not trying not preventing before that.
We had ambitions to upgrade our living space and our first was cute and lovely and our marriage was doing well.
Different prep- kept our kid out of daycare from week 35 to end of fourth trimester
Gone to the value village with so many toys and involved our bigger kid in choosing baby toys instead of assuming he’d want to share (it is super bizarre what he does and doesn’t want to share)
Started and finished potty training sooner
I’m probably not a normal case, lol. I knew it would likely take a long time and might not happen at all, so we wasted very little time. Started trying when first was 12 months. Still no baby or viable pregnancy out of it.
4 months of marriage counseling.
I wanted a second and husband wanted a second in theory but panicked about reality. We really needed to talk through our whole experience with our first and raising an infant through a pandemic and quarantine and having my parents move in with us etc etc.
It was immensely helpful for us. Part of it was also coming up with plans for how we would handle a second child, in writing.
We’re just starting the process of trying, so we’ll see…
For kid 1 we started at 22 months old and did “no rewards” as recommended by Oh Crap and after a year we were still fighting daily battles. She would hold it for as many hours as she could and then have an accident. We started bribing her with chocolate chips and she was good within days. Kid 2 started at 3 years old and rewarded with chocolate chips and stickers and he learned in less than a week and is rock solid. So basically there’s a lot of variables between age and personality and who knows what else.
This is one area we’ve actually had insane success with Latte. She was let’s see… 29 months old? A little over 2.5. And it took like a day and a half lol. We did “ready set go” which is a sorta 3 day method like oh crap but from a gentle parenting perspective. Also a no reward/no punishment approach.
Lattes main challenge is that she HATES being asked if she needs to go, and will NOT pee before she “needs” to. I have a silver nitrate “piss off” cloth in my pocket and she pees in a lot of local parks 
otherwise though, within like a week she was having minimal accidents.
Anyway, just a point on the short side for anyone reading with dread- it’s not always a months long ordeal. Like folks said- different kids, different ages, etc
Hmmm… I may want to give bribery another shot.
My sister-in-law bribed her kids with a single M&M, but I feel like I’d be negotiating with my toddler forever over how many M&Ms he gets…
Maybe stickers…
We were worried about that, too, but we kind of faded it out and it wasn’t a problem. After maybe 2 weeks I started only giving the reward when they remembered it and they quickly forgot. Ymmv of course. Maybe we got lucky with that.
Something about what @Clare-Dragonfly posted about potty bribes made me remember the reward idea I have been using. It’s When (not if)you put the pee pee in the potty we will xx
So I’m going for experiences and food like a millennial. And some stickers
Duckling started pooping in the potty no problem. We got to peeing in a couple of months by putting potties all over the house to make it easy to get from playing to potty and back. Then COVID shutdown took us right back to the start and it took a year for him to be ready again, no matter what we tried. But poops were in the toilet/ potty that whole time. Finally managed it when he decided he was really ready, plus chocolates.
Haven’t achieved nighttime and have no interest in any kind of training for that, am waiting out his body because theres pee every night and whenever he has a surprise nap.
We waited until my postpartum mental health issues were fixed, had talked about how to manage me being unable to do anything for a few weeks from nausea & fatigue. We both went back and forth on being ready, but had an age gap in mind and were both ready at the same time a bit past the early end of that. We had spent time on our relationship to both be ready for a big disruption.
Physical prep, had a “preconception” appointment with my GP and did some basic blood tests (iron, thyroid, etc). This resulted in me on thyroid meds which was a bit life-changing in a good way for me. Tried to get waling as much as i could, and also started trying All The Fancy Food because i knew I would be on a limited diet once pregnant thanks to the high likelihood of repeat Hyperemesis Gravidarum.
Before doing it again, plan is to increase my iron to a decently high number, get on some B supplements, see a GP at group that’s more midwife led and can be more proactive about organising in-home IV for me. Same relationship/ emotional prep, but will be looking to get Ponder some more people on his support team. We will be preparing to rely a lot on pre-made stuff, paying for more household support, asking family for a lot of support.
I havent really started, so I know I’m not really ready to start trying yet. We have the benefit of being fairly sure getting pregnant will work, but also knowing I am probably going to be unable to do literally anything besides grow the baby. It was really hard on Duckling and I need to think about how I can spend time with him and Pumpkin when I’m too sick to move 24/7.
I think none of my answers will apply, but I’ll try. When Daughter was 18 months old, I suddenly felt ready for another baby. I hadn’t until then. But due to life circumstances (Husband was in grad school) we decided to wait another year to even start trying. Then just after she turned two, my mom was killed in a car accident and my whole world was turned upside down and I said, fuck waiting, you never know what’s going to happen in life, let’s not postpone that other baby by another year.
Do different… maybe not move to a tropical island when he was 2 months old? Probably, waiting like we had planned would have made that less likely but I’m glad I had him when I did. We had no sibling trouble so I wouldn’t have done anything differently to prep in that regard. She loved her baby brother immediately. It would have been nice to have not been so broke because one parent worked while the other one stayed home with two kids for a good number of years. So I guess if I could have prepped differently it would have been to not have my finances fucked before having kids. I didn’t know shit about money back then. I’m not good at it now, but it used to be worse!
Does anyone have any good toddler resources that don’t heavily lean on choices? My kid doesn’t like choices- they might stress him out or he might just not care. And he definitely is not constrained by the presented choices when he does have an opinion.
(caveat as always that my kid’s younger so this might not be helpful)
A couple things come to mind: