My name is Jenn, and I'm a 27 year old married and babied chick. In addition to a husband, a seven year old daughter, and a five year old autistic son, I also have four cats, three hermit crabs, two frogs, a few fish, and one snorty little Pug. I work from home doing a variety of writing and even some web design. I love blogging, digital photography and web design.
Ladies, talk to me about potty training. Your insight, opinions and experiences would be most appreciated, especially if you have or are working with potty training.
Alyssa will be three at the end of October. She is still in diapers. Now, I realize that three year olds being in diapers isn’t too uncommon, but at the same time I want to encourage her. But, above all, I don’t want to pressure her.
She understands the concept of going to the bathroom. We started sitting her on the toilet on one of those “fit in” toilet rings for toddlers about four months ago. After several weeks of nothing, we switched to a standard toddler sized potty. Insta-pee! Within a week or so Alyssa was using the potty two and even three times a day. Sometimes with encouragement, sometimes without.
Then we all got sick at the end of May. The potty thing that was going so great suddenly went out the window. So did her interest.
Lately it has been peaked. To cap: Alyssa understands going to the potty – at least, for peeing. (The pooping I can deal with a bit later, I realize that can take more time!) She will listen if we ask her to go to the bathroom. She knows the sensation of having to go, because she’ll tell us, and then get herself ready- she’ll get a book, take off her pants and diaper, position herself on the potty, and go.
But… where to from here? Should we keep her in cloth diapers because she can feel when she goes? Is that even necessary, since she obviously knows the sensation of having to go before she goes?
Should we switch her to those disposable pull-ups and work with those? Exactly how do those differ from cloth?
Or should we go straight to the big-girl panties – letting her pick out her favorites, encouraging potty use when she gets up, after eating, before napping, upon waking up from napping, after dinner, before bed, and so on and so forth?
Please, throw all of your opinions, experiences and suggestions at me!
I found that diapers and pull ups only prolonged the potty training because they are a comfort item of sorts, so I went straight to underwear with both kids. It can be messy, but it gives them more confidence and lets them understand better since it’s a different sensation peeing in underwear as opposed to diapers, which they have been doing for years already.
And I kept using diapers at night until they were pretty much daytime potty trained with minimal accidents, to avoid discouragement of peeing themselves while sleeping.
Took both of my kids about 1 month to day/night potty train. But of course my 3 year old still has accidents.