If you didn't PT with the 3 day method...

[hamster]

How did you go about doing it?

We apparently didnt cause too much psychological damage with our first attempt, since C has been wanting to sit on the potty both with and without pants this week, and actually peed last night at grandma's house. His cousins are coming next week and both of them are potty trained, so I'm hoping that kicks up a desire for him as well.

If you remember, the three day method was a disaster for us. It was just way too much pressure for him. At this point we just ask if he wants to sit, he usually says no, and we say, ok, maybe next time. I still firmly believe he is ready and capable, but at his pace, not our random "today is the day" line in the sand.

[redheadk]

We had the same experience with 3 day. It was absolutely awful.

We did "Oh, Crap!" successfully. The message of "going to the potty is something you learn how to do, just like you learned out how count, and I'm going to help you learn" really resonated with my DD. Her face absolutely lit up and she was really into it. I liked that they focus on potty training milestones. It was less stressful to me and a lot more positive. It was a night and day difference from 3-day method. I think DD was also just more ready and with less pressure, she actually ended up potty training in less than a day.

[scm1011]

Following. We are attempting to potty train this weekend.

[gibbinator]

We sort of just tried, abandoned and retried potty training every couple of months until it actually seemed to stick (or at least be something the boys were interested in). It was a long time ago now but iirc for both kids we gave them treats (gummy bears) when they successfully used the potty, and we had a kid's potty just in the living room so they remembered the option more often.

DS1 was 100% day trained the week before his 3rd birthday, and within a month he was fine all night too. It was like a switch flipped. One week he had no interest in underwear or reward treats, and then within those 2 weeks he just trained himself and only ever had a handful of accidents (day or night) after that time.

DS2 took longer. I think he was nearly 4 before daily mishaps stopped, and we had to wake him up MOTN for pee trips until he was 4.5 or he'd wet the bed.

[hamster]

Jan 17, 2020 9:14:19 GMT -5 scm1011 said:

Following. We are attempting to potty train this weekend.

Godspeed.

[hamster]

Jan 17, 2020 9:14:22 GMT -5 gibbinator said:

We sort of just tried, abandoned and retried potty training every couple of months until it actually seemed to stick (or at least be something the boys were interested in). It was a long time ago now but iirc for both kids we gave them treats (gummy bears) when they successfully used the potty, and we had a kid's potty just in the living room so they remembered the option more often.

DS1 was 100% day trained the week before his 3rd birthday, and within a month he was fine all night too. It was like a switch flipped. One week he had no interest in underwear or reward treats, and then within those 2 weeks he just trained himself and only ever had a handful of accidents (day or night) after that time.

DS2 took longer. I think he was nearly 4 before daily mishaps stopped, and we had to wake him up MOTN for pee trips until he was 4.5 or he'd wet the bed.

Did you do pull ups or anything in between? I feel like he may like the freedom of being able to pull them down on his own.

[dock]

Same as gibbinator, I didn’t really DO anything. DS was very very uninterested in the kiddie potty; when we started offering the regular toilet, he was much more willing. He also liked getting to choose his own underwear.

Daycare was supportive and offered but didn’t make a big deal about it, which helped. It took him a while to night train, so he just stayed in diapers at night until he was dry in the morning.

We did have a period when he was having accidents at daycare (a different one than where he PTed) ALWAYS when they were playing outside (he didn’t want to ask to come inside and lose time), and more frustrating was that he wasn’t saying anything and the teachers weren’t noticing, so he’d be in wet pants all afternoon. We talked a LOT about how the accident is ok, but it’s not ok to sit around in wet pee pants.

[Mrs.flang]

We would haphazardly offer underwear instead of a diaper if we were just bumming around the house. We did that for probably close to 2 months with very little success at all, multiple accidents, and most of the time she preferred diapers. Then one day, she just decided to start using the toilet. I had made such a big deal out of it in my head, but I love how it turned out and I don't think I'd ever recommend any forced training. That was probably sometime in October when she made the switch, and since then I think she's had 2 overnight accidents in the very beginning. Otherwise she's never had an accident in daycare, never really had to use pull-ups, is fine overnight except for those 2 times, and has no issues with poop.

ETA - I had read something about self motivation being super important for this, because really there is no way to control it.  That type of theory would have you giving very little praise for success, no bribing, etc., and really letting your child own this accomplishment.  I know it's not for everyone, that's why there are so many methods out there, but it really resonated with me.  My DD is super strong willed and stubborn so I kind of figured from the start I wouldn't be able to force it.

[dock]

Jan 17, 2020 9:20:38 GMT -5 hamster said:

Jan 17, 2020 9:14:22 GMT -5 gibbinator said:

We sort of just tried, abandoned and retried potty training every couple of months until it actually seemed to stick (or at least be something the boys were interested in). It was a long time ago now but iirc for both kids we gave them treats (gummy bears) when they successfully used the potty, and we had a kid's potty just in the living room so they remembered the option more often.

DS1 was 100% day trained the week before his 3rd birthday, and within a month he was fine all night too. It was like a switch flipped. One week he had no interest in underwear or reward treats, and then within those 2 weeks he just trained himself and only ever had a handful of accidents (day or night) after that time.

DS2 took longer. I think he was nearly 4 before daily mishaps stopped, and we had to wake him up MOTN for pee trips until he was 4.5 or he'd wet the bed.

Did you do pull ups or anything in between? I feel like he may like the freedom of being able to pull them down on his own.

We used cloth diapers and DS learned how to snap/unsnap (mostly... we helped occasionally) them himself, so we never did pull-ups except when traveling.

[andi]

We did a quick start over the weekend where we were on her every 15 minutes to try, put her straight in underwear, etc. When daycare started back up on Monday we put her in pull-ups during the day and switched to underwear when she was home with us. Daycare did take her potty regularly and after about a week she had a dry pull up all day so she could start wearing underwear there too. I would say it took about a week to click for her, but the going back and forth between pull-ups didn't seem to bother her or affect it in any way. We treated them like underwear though and reinforced not getting them wet.

[madringal]

We did it exactly as prescribed for all three kids. For Kids 1 and 3, it worked like a charm in 3 days. For Kid 2, it took two full weeks. I did it right at their second birthdays.

The only real deviations from the plan were that I did not pump my kids full of extra beverages. Didn't really seem necessary. And I didn't put it all on my, like the book says. We don't really parent that way. If DH was home, he was just as involved.

ETA: total reading fail. I thought it said if you DID the 3 day method.  Sorry!

[Susie]

omg, don't do what we did.  DD spent literally a year PTing.  I got so tired of my bathroom floor.

She started asking to sit on the potty at 18m, when she moved to a 18m-3y classroom where she saw other kids doing it.  But she wasn't really ready, and spent the next entire year sort of recreationally using the potty.  

13 months later, something clicked, and daytime PTing happened basically overnight.  I couldn't even tell you what changed, but she went from pull-ups to undies and it was a done deal.

Now 1.5 year after THAT, she is still in pull ups overnight because the urge to pee does not wake her.  She's 4 now.  I keep hoping eventually the switch will flip like it did with daytime PTing.

I really hope the process has a tighter timeline for DS when the time comes.

[gibbinator]

Jan 17, 2020 9:20:38 GMT -5 hamster said:

Jan 17, 2020 9:14:22 GMT -5 gibbinator said:

We sort of just tried, abandoned and retried potty training every couple of months until it actually seemed to stick (or at least be something the boys were interested in). It was a long time ago now but iirc for both kids we gave them treats (gummy bears) when they successfully used the potty, and we had a kid's potty just in the living room so they remembered the option more often.

DS1 was 100% day trained the week before his 3rd birthday, and within a month he was fine all night too. It was like a switch flipped. One week he had no interest in underwear or reward treats, and then within those 2 weeks he just trained himself and only ever had a handful of accidents (day or night) after that time.

DS2 took longer. I think he was nearly 4 before daily mishaps stopped, and we had to wake him up MOTN for pee trips until he was 4.5 or he'd wet the bed.

Did you do pull ups or anything in between? I feel like he may like the freedom of being able to pull them down on his own.

Yeah I'm pretty sure we just generally switched to pull-ups around age 2.5 for both kids. Although maybe it was later because they were both pretty skinny-legged and I remember being appalled at the pricetag. But definitely whenever it was we decided we were serious about potty training we switched over to pull-ups. I can't remember which brand it was but there's a brand where you cans still tear apart the sides so you don't have to deal with trying to carefully slide a pooped-in pull-up down a squiggly toddler's legs...

[mbcdefg]

Following - DD is 2.5 and I think we should start getting more serious about this.

She will gladly sit on the toilet before her bath in exchange for a jellybean. She’s peed on the toilet once, just a couple drops. So she doesn’t seem afraid at least?

She hasn’t been telling us that she has to go or has just went in her diaper, which is why I haven’t really pushed it yet. She doesn’t make a face or hide when she’s going so idk just how aware of it she is, and I heard that’s a sign they’re ready to train? A lot of her daycare classmates wear underwear and use the toilet but she doesn’t seem to notice that they do it, so I don’t know if peer pressure (lol) will work.

I’ve got a bunch of new underwear ready for her - so do we just put her in the underwear tomorrow morning and take her to the potty every few minutes? She responds well to the phone timer going off so I guess we could do it that way.

She also doesn’t wake up during the night even for a pee/poop or if she soaks through her diaper. So do we do pull ups at night or stick with the diaper?

MH got Oh Crap from the library and read it ... but he said it was a LOT and didn’t seem to get to the point with clear insurrections. We don’t really know where to start, it’s overwhelming.

[icedcoffee]

Jan 17, 2020 10:34:58 GMT -5 mbcdefg said:

She also doesn’t wake up during the night even for a pee/poop or if she soaks through her diaper. So do we do pull ups at night or stick with the diaper?

I would recommend diapers at night.  Pull ups don't hold very much in my experience and the amount of pee at night did not decrease at all after potty training DS.  We call them his "sleeping underwear" because "diapers are for babies".

ETA:  We send pull ups for naptime at daycare, but use diapers for nap and bedtime at home.

[beerlover]

I'm apparently using the 365+ day method. My son has been interested it the potty forever but I can't seem to get him to do it 24/7. He will pee consistently and sometimes poop on the potty if prompted, usually with a small reward like a few m&ms or something, but I don't think he can actually recognize when he needs to go and then go do it on his own. He is definitely the type that doesn't want to stop what he's doing to use the bathroom. I thought daycare would be pushing this more but they are taking a hands-off approach (which I'm sure is probably better)..

This is kind of judge-worthy maybe but he pooped in his diaper while we were at the library last night. We had to take him out and change him in the back of our SUV because there was nowhere to change him, which was super annoying. I was happy that no one else was around at the time to notice and judge that my kid is still not potty trained. It's definitely a point of anxiety for me.

[pinkpeony08]

Both kids sort of did it themselves when they decided they were ready? My daughter was just over two. My son was 3. I tried a few times earlier with my son, but he would have a lot of accidents. Once they "bought in" to using the potty, it was really easy. I did have to remind them to go. Both had a harder time with pooping in the potty, both definitely had poop accidents but a lot less pee accidents. It's one of those things you can try all kind of tactics, but until they want to do it, they won't.

[icedcoffee]

Jan 17, 2020 11:01:18 GMT -5 beerlover said:

I'm apparently using the 365+ day method.  

LOL.  I guess we're doing this too.  My son pee potty trained using the 3 day method (Oh, crap!) pretty easily, but it's been 4 months since then and he is still pooping in his underwear almost daily.  Sometimes we get "lucky" and he does it in a diaper at nap/bedtime.  He's pooped in the potty maybe 3 times since we potty trained.  I've pretty much decided IDGAF anymore and just wash a lot of poopy underwear.  We can't put a pull up on him because he'll just pee in there and he's like 95% reliable on pee so I don't want to regress.  Bribing doesn't seem to work for poop.  I think he's either scared, can't tell when he needs to go or some combination of the 2.  I try my best to get fiber into him and just clean poop underwear for now.

Do not feel judged.  Your kid is only like 3 months older than mine.  There are tons of kids not potty trained yet.  My nephew is the same age as your kid and they JUST potty trained last week and he's still having tons of accidents and not pooping in the potty at all.  I think it's really common for boys to not potty train until much closer to 4.  Some do it easier and some stretch it out, but none of them go to high school wearing diapers.

[icedcoffee]

No single moment since I've become a parent has made it clearer that all kids are different until I potty trained. What works for 1 kid probably won't work for another. Also--I learned my kid is REALLY stubborn.

[hamster]

Jan 17, 2020 11:22:39 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

No single moment since I've become a parent has made it clearer that all kids are different until I potty trained. What works for 1 kid probably won't work for another. Also--I learned my kid is REALLY stubborn.

Attempt #1 was pretty humbling I must say. And a great lesson for us as parents to really think about how our kid learns and responds, and not just go by the book. I'm pretty sure our solution will be to do exactly the opposite of what the book says.

[scm1011]

Jan 17, 2020 11:01:18 GMT -5 beerlover said:

I'm apparently using the 365+ day method. My son has been interested it the potty forever but I can't seem to get him to do it 24/7. He will pee consistently and sometimes poop on the potty if prompted, usually with a small reward like a few m&ms or something, but I don't think he can actually recognize when he needs to go and then go do it on his own. He is definitely the type that doesn't want to stop what he's doing to use the bathroom. I thought daycare would be pushing this more but they are taking a hands-off approach (which I'm sure is probably better)..

This is kind of judge-worthy maybe but he pooped in his diaper while we were at the library last night. We had to take him out and change him in the back of our SUV because there was nowhere to change him, which was super annoying. I was happy that no one else was around at the time to notice and judge that my kid is still not potty trained. It's definitely a point of anxiety for me.

Your kid is only 2.5 months older than mine and I really don't think we're at the judgeworthy level yet. Not even close. I'm sorry it gives you anxiety though. 

[icedcoffee]

Jan 17, 2020 11:24:53 GMT -5 hamster said:

Jan 17, 2020 11:22:39 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

No single moment since I've become a parent has made it clearer that all kids are different until I potty trained. What works for 1 kid probably won't work for another. Also--I learned my kid is REALLY stubborn.

Attempt #1 was pretty humbling I must say. And a great lesson for us as parents to really think about how our kid learns and responds, and not just go by the book. I'm pretty sure our solution will be to do exactly the opposite of what the book says.

When we did the 3 day method I went to sleep every night absolutely exhausted.  It was the hardest thing I have ever done and...I've done some things in my life.  It's just mentally exhausting.  I really got to know my kid that weekend.

[Mrs.flang]

Jan 17, 2020 11:24:53 GMT -5 hamster said:

Jan 17, 2020 11:22:39 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

No single moment since I've become a parent has made it clearer that all kids are different until I potty trained. What works for 1 kid probably won't work for another. Also--I learned my kid is REALLY stubborn.

Attempt #1 was pretty humbling I must say. And a great lesson for us as parents to really think about how our kid learns and responds, and not just go by the book. I'm pretty sure our solution will be to do exactly the opposite of what the book says.

I read three different potty books over the course of a weekend and almost the entire time I was thinking that there was no way I could make any of it work for me/us/her.

One of the books basically said if your child was over 36 months (which mine was), there was no hope for you.  As if no one ever uses the toilet if you're not fully trained before 3.

Now that it's over I can't imagine any other way working. 

[beerlover]

scm1011, icedcoffee, you guys are totally right, and I didn't mean in any way to imply that 3.5 is too late. I just have a lot of anxiety (working on it!) and this is one of the things I get stuck on when I am spiraling. In my brain I know it's totally normal- there are 4 boys at my son's in-home daycare who were all born summer 2016 and 2 of them are potty trained and 2 of them are not, and my nephew didn't PT until closer to 4, so it's not like I haven't seen this before. I just naively figured this wouldn't be that much of a struggle.

I don't know, I keep hearing people who have said they didn't force it and one day their kid just woke up and PT, and I guess I am still waiting for that day haha.

[scm1011]

Jan 17, 2020 11:33:59 GMT -5 beerlover said:

scm1011 , icedcoffee , you guys are totally right, and I didn't mean in any way to imply that 3.5 is too late. I just have a lot of anxiety (working on it!) and this is one of the things I get stuck on when I am spiraling. In my brain I know it's totally normal- there are 4 boys at my son's in-home daycare who were all born summer 2016 and 2 of them are potty trained and 2 of them are not, and my nephew didn't PT until closer to 4, so it's not like I haven't seen this before. I just naively figured this wouldn't be that much of a struggle.

I don't know, I keep hearing people who have said they didn't force it and one day their kid just woke up and PT, and I guess I am still waiting for that day haha.

You and me both. Or really I was hoping daycare would do the hard work for me lol. I know that you have to wait until they're ready, but I really think my kid will wear diapers to college if I don't take the initiative. We'll see. I'm not putting too much pressure on it this weekend; if it works great, if not we'll try another time. I'm hoping it will be less of a THING than I'm anticipating like it was with weaning him off the bottle (he still drank out of his dealry loved baby bottles at home until he was 2.25 and I thought it was going to be this dramatic event when I finally took them away....it wasn't at all).

[icedcoffee]

Jan 17, 2020 11:38:08 GMT -5 scm1011 said:

Jan 17, 2020 11:33:59 GMT -5 beerlover said:

scm1011 , icedcoffee , you guys are totally right, and I didn't mean in any way to imply that 3.5 is too late. I just have a lot of anxiety (working on it!) and this is one of the things I get stuck on when I am spiraling. In my brain I know it's totally normal- there are 4 boys at my son's in-home daycare who were all born summer 2016 and 2 of them are potty trained and 2 of them are not, and my nephew didn't PT until closer to 4, so it's not like I haven't seen this before. I just naively figured this wouldn't be that much of a struggle.

I don't know, I keep hearing people who have said they didn't force it and one day their kid just woke up and PT, and I guess I am still waiting for that day haha.

You and me both. Or really I was hoping daycare would do the hard work for me lol. I know that you have to wait until they're ready, but I really think my kid will wear diapers to college if I don't take the initiative. We'll see. I'm not putting too much pressure on it this weekend; if it works great, if not we'll try another time. I'm hoping it will be less of a THING than I'm anticipating like it was with weaning him off the bottle (he still drank out of his dealry loved baby bottles at home until he was 2.25 and I thought it was going to be this dramatic event when I finally took them away....it wasn't at all).

I was hoping this too and it turned out for me the way daycare was doing it was not working at all.  Once we trained at home I actually went in with a list of recommendations THEY needed to do and then he was successful at daycare.  Would have been nice if they did it though.  LOL

[egishere]

For all three of my kids we took it slow. Only one of them picked it up pretty quickly-within three days. My other DD would be interested then not so she took a couple of weeks. DS took a good month or two! I finally had to take him to Target and let him pick out a nice toy he wanted then I pout it on the fireplace mantel for him to still see but he couldn't start playing with it until he was finally PT. May be mean but it was the only thing that finally motivated him and he was almost 4! PT was pone thing I wasn't going to force on them if weren't ready.

[beerlover]

scm1011, yes! I was also hoping daycare would do some of the heavy lifting here. I had friends whose kids previously went to this daycare and they were all like "oh they basically potty trained the kids for us!" That has not been my experience. :/ I would probably rather take the stance of not forcing it, but like you, I think my kid just doesn't have much motivation to do it otherwise.

[waverly]

I guess I technically did the 3 day method with both kids, but I didn't really need to with DD. DD had actually already trained herself.

What started her training, is that as the second child she wants to do everything her older brother does right now. The second piece of the puzzle was that I would change her diaper in the morning and she would immediately pee through it (cloth diapers) because this was her big first morning pee from all night or at least most of the night. So I started to put her on the toilet first thing in the morning for that first pee because I was changing her diaper, putting on clothes and then having to change her diaper and put new clothes on her again because she had soaked herself.

She learned to do that quickly, so now she had that mind body connection on how to pee. Then at the daycare they offered the toilet to her every time they did a diaper change, and she was getting to the point of peeing 5 times a day on it, so I was like Oh crap I guess I better potty train her. I was holding off because PTing DS had traumatized me.

[dcn]

My kids were both over 3. Ds1 has one accident and then was good to go. I don’t remember poop being an issue either. I will say I trained him when I was super pregnant to avoid having 2 in diapers and after two weeks he had such huge meltdowns about going in the potty and he sobbed for diapers and peed everywhere so he went back in diapers for a few more months. When he was ready it was barely even a blip.

Ds2 took a little more practice but had it down within a week or so. After 2-3 says he asked for a diaper and I shrugged and said they were all gone, he wears underwear now. Poop took a few more weeks and we threw a bunch of underwear away (and ds2 flushed a pair bc “you said poop goes in the toilet mommy!” Which....is true lol).

Anyway, I’m a big proponent of just waiting until they decide they want to do it. With ds2 I pushed a little bc he was starting preschool 2 months later and needed to be trained. He was 3.5 at that point and I figured I had the summer and he could pee in the backyard if needed ha.

Both wore pull-ups overnight for a long time. Ds2 is 4 and still wears one though is dry 95% of the time. Ds1 wore them overnight off and on until he was 5.5 or so.

Agree with Pp who said that it is kid dependent and personality dependent. What works for one kid won’t work for all.