Title says it all, but let me provide more context.
My son is almost 4 (will be in January) and has been potty trained since 20 months. He has been wearing underwear and peeing on the potty since then and only wears pull ups at night (still doesn’t wake up dry but I know this is more of a biological milestone). He has pooped on the potty maybe 3 times closer to when we first potty trained but the poop part never stuck. He doesn’t have any accidents, he is very in touch with his body and knows when he has to go. He NEVER poops during the day, it’s ALWAYS at bedtime when he gets a pull up on anyways. We’ve been able to get him to poop IN the bathroom but he will NOT sit on the potty, even with a pull up on, to poop. We have tried EVERYTHING. We have tried incentives, rewards, buying the toy he really wants and leaving it on display. Sticker charts. Candy. You name it, we’ve tried it. I haven’t heard of a single method that we HAVENT tried. The only thing left is to take away pull ups but he’s just not ready to be dry all night and I’m not going to let him sleep in pee all night. Idk what I’m looking for because I don’t think there’s anything we can do to force it so maybe I just need encouragement that he won’t be going to high school in pull ups (partially joking) and he’ll eventually figure it out on his own (hopefully sooner than later 😅).

Sincerely, at my wits end

My son turned 3 last week and we started potty training about 7 weeks ago over a 4 day weekend (husband and I work full time). He did great and has minimal accidents but he’s relying entirely on our prompting to use the potty. Maybe twice during the last 7 weeks he’s said “I have to pee”. If we don’t initiate he will just pee in his pants. About a week or two into potty training we tried not prompting him for a couple days and it was a lot of accidents.

He’s at daycare 3x a week and we suspect he drinks less water there and is able to hold his pee between the transition times where all kids are taken to the potty. When he does have accidents, it’s usually end of the day when they’re outside for a long stretch. So he’s not telling the teachers he has to pee or after he has an accident. He’s with my parents 2x a week and they also have our 10 month old those days and I don’t want to make it harder on them so they’ve been prompting as well to avoid accidents. He wears very lightly padded underwear at daycare and my parents to cut down on the mess but if he does a full pee he is absolutely wet and needs a change of clothes so they are not acting as a diaper.

I hoped with time he’d transition to initiating but I haven’t seen any promising signs yet. His communication is excellent and cognitively he gets it so I’m torn between it being hormonal / developmental and he just can’t connect urge to holding it to telling us yet or if he’s just way too play-focused (very strong willed and play trumps all things, even snacks!!) and refusing to disrupt himself even though he feels the urge. I know one approach is to go commando and let him fully wet himself and clean up and get disrupted to show how not fun that is and we will try that this weekend at home but when we first started potty training he was totally unphased by accidents.. it was as though he preferred to pee in his pants than stop what he was doing, cleanup and all!

He’s good when we prompt (always a bit of a power struggle but gives in easily because he loves to read his books on potty) but I’d love to move to him initiating at least some. Especially when we’re out, we stayed home for about 4-5 weeks but we have started to get out again and I’m constantly thinking about the best time to get him all set up in a public potty to avoid an accident out since I know he won’t tell me and that’s just non sustainable (especially moving into winter and bulky clothes).

Anyone have a similar situation and what helped it click for your toddler to move to initiating their need to use the potty?

My 2yo was very interested in the potty (they have them in her daycare room) so we did a pantless weekend to try and train her.

This kid can withhold pee for HOURS. It took 3 hours to get the first pee out of her. Since then there have been a few accidents at daycare but none at home.

This morning she woke us up at 5 (1.5 hours earlier than usual). I went in and her pull up was completely dry. I thought "oh I'll put her on the potty and maybe we can all go back to sleep" NO

She refused to sit, then screamed and cried to have her pull up again. I refused. 2 hours later she finally peed on the potty. She was so pleased and proud of herself.

On the one hand I'm trying not to over pressure her, but on the other we are clearly locked in a battle of wills and she's trying to hold out for a diaper. I am not giving in but I'm also not being my best self. Any advice welcome.

We just finished day 4 of the 3 day method and it is going very well. My little girl tells me when she has to potty (both pee and poop) AND she stays completely dry overnight 7pm-7am SO I am very proud of her! BUT each time she gets onto the potty, she’s peeing incompletely and not letting it all go so she’s announcing that she had to potty literally every 15 minutes! Any tips on how to get her to empty her bladder so that we can actually leave the house?

Almost a week ago my freshly 20 month old wanted her diaper off while I was on a virtual appointment. I quickly took it off, then set out her potty while I finished my appointment just in case by some miracle she wanted to use it. To my surprise she sat and peed, and then a few minutes later sat and pooped.
I’d been wanting to train soon anyway (I’m 14 weeks pregnant and want her potty trained before baby #2) so I decided that was my sign to start.
I wasn’t following a specific method at first, though I’d seen bits and pieces of oh crap. I had her bottomless for the first few days and planned to put on pants on the 3rd day or so. She improved from day 1 to day 2, and was great about pooping on the potty. Day 3 started a lot of resistance (I tried pants, underwear and bottomless, and hindsight I hovered and prompted WAY too much) and that continued through day 4 when I finally decided to read Oh Crap.

Now we’re on day 6 of training and I’m not sure how to proceed. Today I tried putting pants on her more often and she peed in them pretty quickly 3 times in a row. I tried to hand her a win and she had 2 more pee accidents bottomless before we finally had a success.

I don’t want to give up training until I’ve given it 2 weeks of effort, but I’m also so exhausted. Just when I think she’s getting the hang of it she has 2-4 pee accidents in a row.

I’m looking for advice, similar stories, or just some solidarity I guess. Is this normal?

TLDR: 20 month old daughter still misses the potty 50% of the time for pee’s and I’m switching back and forth between commando and bottomless

Hi! My son is almost 3.5 and on the spectrum (high functioning), he talks and has his own opinions about everything. He has sever fear /dislike of pooping.
It started when he was 1, he would all of a sudden sit on his bum and strain, or so we thought. So we picked him up and he pooped in his diaper in our hand for a while. We thought he was straining. But then ot suggested, that my son was actually withholding poop. And it was true. Long story short, we went to gastroenterology and we give him MiraLAX every single day. It makes poop soft but he still tries to hold it and constantly has smears of poop on his diapers.
He doesn’t want to poop on the potty even with treats, cartoons and ice cream . One time we had to give him the kids enema (bc he even holds the suppositories ) and he would not go on the potty even then, he was crying hysterically and everything just went on the floor (sorry for details)
Im at a loss. How do I even approach potty training?
He can pee on the potty with almost no mistakes but he doesn’t let me to put cotton undies on him.
And if it’s regular clothes, he will get poop stains everywhere too…
Did anyone have a similar experience?
😕

Medical info: My son was constipated for a while, did an ultrasound and x-rays. We have gone to the doctors and are on month 3 of MiraLAX. He never had poop accidents, only the constant need to pee every 15-30 minutes which prompted us to look into it and find he was constipated. He was backed up which was putting pressure on his bladder and he had said that he couldn't feel when he had to go. We have worked hard on listening to our body to help him recognize the signs and feelings and it seemed to be working. But now we are dealing with choosing to ignore his body and his need to pee and waiting til he cannot hold it and peeing himself. He has said and is aware when he has to pee and is actively choosing not to go. He will tell us when he first felt the need and that he knew he had to go but didn't want to stop playing or activity, but has no problem walking away to take care of this after it happens. My partner and I are stuck

We have been doing the following:
-We go potty every hour with a timer
-Have a potty chart that he helped create and can check mark off. We have offered a small reward (letter cookie) at the end of the day for celebrating him being dry.
- Not shaming when he does have a pee incident. We will ask if he could feel the pees before he had to go and most of the time he will tell us he knew he had to go 5 minutes before the accident. We just tell him we are proud he can feel his body and we will continue working on listening to his body by using the bathroom when he needs to. Then we move to cleaning up.
- When he does have an accident, we immediately stop what we are doing, use the shower, and he does his laundry to help promote him understanding that when we pee ourselves we need to clean up and keep our bodies clean.

Nothing seems to be helping move the progress of choosing to try to hold it. He loves doing his own laundry, loves taking a shower regardless and has no problem walking away from play to do so. He rarely gets juice and only drinks water and when he does drink juice we make sure to tell him to try after 30 minutes.

Any advice??

Hi all! We started potty training somewhat unexpectedly at 21 months. We had introduced the potty and kept it out for her to get familiar with it, explained what it was, and had a Peppa pig book about the potty. We didn’t expect to start training until 2, but I guess she picked up a lot from the book because one day she randomly told me she had to poo and asked for the potty. We’ve switched to pull ups and have been lightly training since then.

I say lightly because we more or less just made a routine of using it before and after sleep, before we leave the house, (inconsistently) after meals, and whenever she asks. I wasn’t interested in anything like the oh crap method.

By 23 ish months she was fully poop potty trained. She’s 25 months now and has pooped in her diaper only once or twice the last 2 months. She always asks to use the potty when she feels a poop coming on.

The trouble now is pee. We’ve been in training pants the last 2 months, but they basically feel like a slightly less absorbant diaper so I don’t know how effective they are. She has no problem being in a wet diaper and no desire to change out of them. Some days she can stay dry the whole morning, but usually no. She’ll ask to use the potty to pee often if we’re out but never at home. Sometimes before bed she’ll sit on the potty and do nothing, and then 10 minutes later pee in her diaper.

So I’m not sure where to go from here. Is she simply not ready to be fully potty trained (ie her bladder can’t hold it yet for that long)?
I’m debating staying home for a few days, saying bye bye to the diapers, and putting her into underwear and expecting some accidents. I just don’t know if that will be a waste of time at this point if she typically can’t stay dry for longer periods of time right now.

Any and all advice appreciated! :) just a note though I have no desire to try the oh crap method. It’s cold where I live right now and I have no desire for her to run around semi naked for 2 days.

ETA: she has no visible cues for when she pees!

We are currently on Day 5 of potty training my 2-year-11-month-old boy.
We have had zero success. Day 1 & 2 were full of accidents which was expected. Each time he had an accident he immediately told us what he had done and we would tell him that’s okay accidents happen and explain that he needs to do it on the potty.

Day 3 & 4 there have been no accidents but he also isn’t going on his potty. Now he is withholding until nap time and doing a wee in his nappy. The same in the afternoon until bedtime.
He isn’t squeezing his legs together and stuff. He is still playing as normal and running around.
He understands where poo and pee go, if I ask him he says I’m the potty. He has special toys and books that he can have while on the potty so he likes sitting on the potty.

We’ve been doing the no pants method too.
I know I shouldn’t compare but I can’t help but feel like I’m failing when I go online and see everyone else’s kids are doing it within 3 days 😩

Is this “normal”? shes staying hydrated and we are trying to carch when she pees but used to poop like twice a day, now nothing since startingpotty training …

Let me start by saying we have a very independent son. Everything with him has to be a suggestion because if he is “told” to do anything he will absolutely not do it.

Day 1 we tried the Oh Crap method of prompting a sit on the potty every 45 minutes or so. We didn’t give him a choice and just said okay time to go sit on the potty. He did NOT take well to that at all. Every time we said okay he ran away and screamed and cried like he was afraid of it. He also had an accident immediately after each prompting.

Eventually we took a step back and switched to stickers and M&ms just to get him to sit on the potty. He had a few more accidents but eventually he did two big pees on the potty with the promise of a lollipop as a reward.

This morning the promise of rewards is not working. He just says no when we say if you sit on the potty and go peepee you get a candy. He just says no and walks away.

Eventually he did do a good pee on the potty just before nap time but it came after 2 small accidents and a lot of prompting and some resistance from him to stay sitting on the toilet to finish the pee. I’m just trying to figure out how to move forward. I want to be as consistent as possible but should we just let him yell and have the accidents or be on top of him? It’s very confusing when he isn’t consistent himself with his responses to our prompts or rewards. I honestly feel like I’m going a bit crazy.

LG (she will be 3 January) has started potty training this week - she will sit on the potty, she knows that’s where wee goes etc. but she never actually wees. We did pants/trousers the first day and she had two accidents in the morning, dry nap time nappy and we tried no pants/trousers after nap and she had another accident in the evening (she was holding it until the physically couldn’t). Then waited until bedtime nappy to wee/poo.
Today we have done bottomless all day but she absolutely refuses to wee. She has been sitting on the potty every 90 minutes or so fine, but won’t do anything. Have tried books, blowing bubbles but nothing worked. We were playing a tickle game and a bit of wee came out and she got really upset about it and stopped herself from doing any more.
We tried a bath before nap time and she clearly needed to wee but she just wouldn’t (to the point of physically holding herself). I don’t know how to help her feel relaxed enough to wee, I’m trying to be as calm as I can but finding it difficult when she is causing herself so much distress - I know it’s a new feeling etc etc but I don’t know what to do. Should we stop? Or will the problem just be the same further down the line? Or do we keep going and hope she feels better about it soon?
Any advice is welcome, thank you!