Ughhhhhh so here’s where we are with potty training:
My child poops in his potty consistently (because we bribe him).
I do not want to bribe for every pee - nor do I understand how to. He will calmly play with his toys and pee on the floor and he does not care. Mid-pee I drag him to the potty and he’s talking about excavators and he does not care. I did the Big Little Feelings class and tried using the scripts. My toddler tells me that he doesn’t want to listen to his body. He will go potty later. He doesn’t need to pee. He already peed. Etc etc.
Out of frustration I told him that he’s not listening to me and that he needs to listen to mommy. Now he constantly tells me that I’m not listening to him , even when I’m giving him my undivided attention.
Daycare puts him on the potty at regular intervals and he has less accidents there - we try that at home but he fights us.
We’re on a one hour timer, then the parent in charge announces it’s time for potty, lifts him and puts him on the potty. He usually pees every other time. Before we pulled him from daycare they were taking him every hour and he was having mostly zero accident days.
He’s sad that we threw away one or two books, but yeah- no internal motivation, in oh crap she suggested using a consequence on this kind of kid to check if they can go (taking the toy they were playing with during the accident, returning after they go in the potty). That worked, but only the first time or two - he has other toys and we’re not open to controlling the potty with punishment or rewards, sooooo we’ll just live on a timer?
This post, including the comments has some ideas, a lot of them are bribes.
Considering the making everything contingent on the potty, but I’ll probably just stick with the timer. Might go sticker shopping and reward every pee. Might go insane from pee everywhere
Usually his bun is bare, but we’re trying to do more pants and underwear. Underwear sometimes causes accidents if he’s been in pull-ups for outings more (like when we were in the hospital, so we haven’t been doing underwear)
We ended up with a toilet trained kid at 4.5 years old, so no, y’all aren’t alone. (In his case, from ~ 3 he would only go toilet for poops, and he is now 5+ and is still in a big kid nappy for nighttime and will wet himself if he falls asleep during the day).
Another potty anecdote for you all - this morning B came outside with me to try and clean up the disaster of our yard from the storm last night and apparently peed in her underwear without saying anything at all about it. Then she came inside and when I closed the bedroom door to try getting ready for work she had a meltdown outside the door and insisted that she needed to use “mommy’s big potty.” I discovered the accident and asked her when she peed herself and she said “outside helping mama” She wasn’t even awake 20 minutes before having her first accident today.
We’ve had some luck recently when Meowlet was trying not to poop by reminding him that poop was building up in his body and would get hard. That visual helped him understand why emptying his body was important.
Speaking of potty training. Has anyone used any of the potty training underwear for night time? I linked one here and in theory they work. I’m tired of buying pull ups and use cloth diapers for the younger one so washing isn’t a big deal. Mostly are they worth the $25 per pair?
Tony & Ava Tony and Ava Incontinence Underwear for Girls Potty Training Underwear (X-Small, Rainbow) https://a.co/94ZrgAv
And we use them in the daytime for outings. For the first part of potty training he was going in them so we pulled them out of rotation. Now they are perfect. His outfit will get soaked and anything he sits in will get damp, but no puddles. So I think they’d be good at night for a mostly trained kid, but you’d probably have to do the sheets after an accident
My fully potty trained child decided he was just gonna pee on the floor in the living room. Likely because he didnt want to bother going to the bathroom and didnt think I would catch him. But allegedly because, “I’m a hedgehog.” -_-
So, I made him clean it up and put the timer on and didn’t let him go play til I deemed it had been enough cleaning time (in reality I mopped and disinfected first because gross). But next time I am gonna also put him in the shower. GO IN YOUR PANTS, WILL YOU? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
Ofc I was kind and loving but mentally thinking “wow ur bein a shithead today”
Ha we drag child to shower and spray his legs down.
Good on you for separating response and thoughts about being a shithead. The logic problem is real, right? Like… Not sure how you would miss the pee on the floor or the fact he’s the only one who could have done it… But still! Maybe mum wont notice and I keep playing!
Given my child’s observational skills and the fact that he thinks everyone thinks like he does, I fully expect that he would have thought at Meowlets age that it was a good strategy.
Potty training update. The watch is amazing. She is very resistant to us reminding her to sit on the potty. However, since the watch came yesterday There hasn’t been a single accident!! I set it to go off every 30 minutes and she sits on the potty every time it goes off! Tomorrow I will probably adjust it to every 45 minutes because she is going roughly every other time. She has also gone twice off cycle when she felt the need to go but the watch wasn’t telling her to.
She also thinks her watch has Siri and she keeps talking to it “hey Siri, me pee in potty! Hey Siri, call daddy”
Do you put diapers on a baby registry? If so, how many of each size? Feels like a gamble but also I assume you can exchange/return if you end up with too many of one size and don’t need them? DH’s job is to research cloth diapering but I’m leaning towards no because we share a machine with the upstairs tenants and they’re notoriously bad at leaving things down there for ages. I’d want reliable instantaneous access.
You’re going to wash a lot of other baby paraphernalia, so establishing what you xan do with the upstairs tenants when they leave stuff in the laundry is important even if hou use disposables.
