Every night I seat my son (15 months) on his potty because around 7pm chances are good he has to pee. So I seat him and he gets up immediatly, I seat him again an he gets up again and again. Last night we had the same procedure as every night. Eventually I gave it up and seated him onto the real toilett (on the lid) so I could brush his teeth.
And what did he do? He peed. :smack: By the time I got him on his potty he was done. So I cleaned everything up and started washing him.
And what did he do? He peed. Again. :smack::smack: I rushed for the potty but he was done before I could get it.
I went on washing him and he pressed another couple drops out. Then FINALLY he was empty.
Do you know similar stories or have tips how I could keep him on his potty? I tried toys but they don’t help.
Around here it’s normal to start this age. My girlfriends started even earlier with their sons.
And it’s not like we force them or something. It’s more like getting them used to the potty as an object and in case they’re “successful” we say “Oh, finey, finey.” That’s all. No pressure included.
My daughter hated the potty and refused to have anything to do with it. I’m not sure if it was just not comfortable to sit on, or if it was just one more example of her not wanting to do things the baby way. I strongly suspect the latter :).
We fixed the whole thing with one of those padded toilet seats which fit on/inside the main toilet seat, along with a set of wooden steps so she could climb up and rest her feet while she was sat down. She chose it herself and went for the Thomas the Tank Engine theme. We had a portable, fold up version that we used while travelling.
That might be a solution for you - although I’m not sure how he’d cope at that age? We didn’t start her till she was about 2, although some of my friends’ chlidren were trained much earlier.
Get a child’s seat for the real toilet. We got our son a potty, which he refused to use, but wore as a hat for months. We put a child’s seat on the toilet and he was happy to use the regular toilet. And I’m glad that you’re not pushing it too hard. That can make them even less likely to use it.
Oh, and be prepared for trouble getting him to poop on the potty. For some reason, most kids I know have no problems peeing in the toilet, but poop seems to be the final frontier.
Edited to add: For what it’s worth, I don’t see it as too strange that you’re training early. When we were visiting India, we had a devil of a time trying to find diapers for our then 18-month-old son. Most kids there are trained by 1 year.
One trick we found with our daughter (of around that age) was to sit her in the shower, on the potty and run warmish water over her feet.
She thought that was funny and it more often than not acted as a trigger to urinate.
It was really just to get her to make the connection of potty=wee
If he’s getting up and your putting him on “again and again”, it’s sounds like a bit of pressure to me.
To answer the bigger question, do things to entertain him such as reading to him while he’s sitting. Frankly, we didn’t have much of an issue- we waited until he was a willing participant and he potty trained over a weekend.
Pooping on the potty, on the other hand, was a different story…
2 1/2 is young enough and boys do take much longer than girls. He probably won’t be totally reliably trained until he is closer to 4 years of age, so you need to chill out because it takes a long time for potty training, and not accomplished in 6 months, even.
In this case (and I don’t mean to sound snotty) ask your girlfriends. Ask people from “around here.” Most parents on this board are Americans, and we praise Jesus if they potty train before two. OK, not all Americans are that religious, but early training might be a sign that there IS a God…
I can’t help. Both mine were three and a half. They did exactly what yours did starting at about that age. And continued to drive me crazy for the next two years. My only advice is that almost no one goes to college wearing diapers.
Not to speak about the OP specifically, but in my experience potty training this young usually means the parents are trained. They learn when to place the kidlet on the potty (after a nap, after eating etc) to catch him needing to go. The kid, himself, has limited control over or awareness of his bladder/bowels.
Now it may completely different for the OP and her circle of friends, but that’s been my experience at least.
To the OP, play it by ear, don’t bother with what “others” do around you. From personal experience, it’s no use starting to potty train a boy under the age of 2, and I’d probably wait later.
My late mother-in-law (from Belgium) swore that her children were potty-trained at 9 months, as though that were an achievement of sorts. I agee with IvoryTowerDenizon, I think my mother-in-law was trained, not the babies.
Maybe you should spank him if he doesn’t do it right. I don’t know if that’s how they do it where you are. It’s not how it’s done here either but whatever. It’s just a suggestion.
Seriously, both of my girls weren’t even presented with a potty until they were a few months past two years old. Both got little girl chairs and a potty book. I opened the box and showed them and said “You go pee pee and poo poo here now because you’re a big girl!” and made it like a special happy fun time event. They got it because they were old enough to comprehend and their bodies were developed enough to learn to hold their urine until they got to the potty. There was no training. I just said this is it, and they got it. There were accidents, especially with my oldest, but they were mostly at night.
Of course I’ve never had the opportunity to train a boy. I bet it’s at least a little bit different.
This is timely. I noticed these in the store today and wondered if they’d be more effective than the lil potty chairs because I seem to recall my parents deciding to use the over the toilet one like yours for my little brother because they’d had a hard time transitioning me from potty to big toilet.
Boys pee standing up, so it’s not all that helpful to train him to do it sitting down. Here’s my trick: toss a cheerio or two into the bowl and help him learn how to aim the stream at the cheerio.
On the plus side, you won’t have to work to keep him seated. One the not-so-plus side this is real potty training since what he’s learning is how to tell when he’s ready to pee (which is what you really want anyway) rather than just how to sit still until he happens to pee, and success will be tough to achieve at his young age.
If the weather is nice where you are you could also take him out in the garden and let him be nakee for a while. Chances are that at some point he’ll pee without thinking about it, but he’ll be interested in how it works and start getting the hang of it eventually.
Good luck!
ETA: you can take the potty chair out to the garden with you for target practice too!
We had the plastic toilet seat with attached ladder to place over the toilet as well. I couldn’t be bothered with a potty chair – eek, I would have had to clean it out each time and scrub it clean, and how is that an improvement over diapers? I held off on potty training my son until he was pushing three and a half, on the theory that the older and therefore more cognitively and physically developed he was, the more quickly he could master the toilet. My mother-in-law made much of how my (younger than my son) nephew was out of diapers before my son, but I couldn’t help but notice that he had accidents for months and months afterwards.
Waldelfe, in my own opinion, 15 months is way too early to be thinking about getting out of diapers. Definitely let him experience the toilet or potty chair, but I would pay attention to his own signals and handle the transition from diapers to toilet when he seems ready for it. What’s the rush?
My own baby boy is 14 today, and I promise you that the subject of exactly when he was toilet trained comes up never.
