Our son is 3.5 years old. We’ve been working on potty training on & off since around the time he was three. For the most part he seems ready to potty train. He stays dry over night & has for a while now. He can stay dry for 1-2 hours. He has sat on the potty & gone on the potty plenty over the last half year.

At home & daycare we have pretty much tried it all. Sticker charts, rewards, candy, toys, over the top praise, potty training under wear on its own, training underwear & real underwear under a pull up.

He can 100% by hisself undress & set the potty up to climb up & sit. Sometimes he doesn’t even want us to come in with him & he does it all alone. But he just won’t advance any further. He gets super excited when he goes & is super proud of himself.

But nothing motivates him. Most of his little friends at daycare older & younger have potty trained & moved on to the preschool room from the toddler room. He claims to want to go to the preschool room because he’s a “preschool/big kid” & gets mad when they take him back to the toddler room.

He wants to go to preschool at the big kid school & ride the big yellow bus. We’ve told him screening is just a few months away. But it still doesn’t motivate him enough.

This weekend we spent 3 days just doing underwear with pants or shorts. We quit asking him to go potty & just telling him it was time to try. It didn’t feel like we made a ton of progress. He went in the potty plenty of times but also had plenty of accidents.

He absolutely does not care about being wet. He usually only noticed or cares when pee was pouring out & pooling on the floor.

Only thing we haven’t tried is going bottomless. Otherwise we’re at a loss.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

We have been somewhat training my 28 month old toddler for the last month, switching to pull ups and prompting her to use the potty at all transition pounts Daycare is on board, and she is getting prompted there and uses pull ups as well. She is great at doing all the steps herself. However, she has only made tiny tiny advancements in realizing she peed or pooped, and still goes in her diaper.

I know a solution is to go straight to underwear or commando at this point, but daycare doesn't want us to do that until she starts initiating. They say they will let us know when they think we can pull the diapers on a Friday, and then on Monday send her in underwear. Do we simply keep prompting and hope it clicks? Will occasional diaper-free time help? Daycare wanting initiation and then no diapers just seems backwards from what a lot of the popular methods suggest, so I'm a little lost. Thanks!

My little girl is terrified of peeing on the potty. She whimpers and cries and seems so unhappy. It's so heartbreaking to watch her like that. But she is over three years old now and this is attempt number 3 at potty training her. We are so lost at what to do. She answers all the questions correctly and has successfully peed on the potty three or four times but we had to really make her sit down to do it. Even after successful pees and rewards and sticker charts and all the things she is still terrified and won't go to the potty to pee, rather has accidents on the floor. The very last thing she'll do is do it on the potty if we are hugging her and holding her on it.

Has anyone else experienced a toddler who is terrified of pee and won't use the potty? Screams for pants or a nappies etc.

I feel like most people have the opposite problem.. but my 24 month old daughter has been potty training for about a month and a half. Some days are awesome and we have no accidents at all. Other days, it’s a mess.

It seems like the days she does the best are the days that we are out and about, doing activities or running errands. She has never had an accident in her car seat, and I take the little potty with us, so whenever we reach our destination, she will sit on it and go without issue. She usually uses the little potty in the car before and after whatever we are doing at that time but has also used the public toilets a few times. I think we have only ever had one accident while in public..

At home is a whole different story. We have both the little potty and the potty seat available for her. Some days she goes great.. other days it is a fight to get her to sit on either potty. She will just get up and walk away if she doesn’t feel like sitting there, and then have an accident a few minutes later. I feel like she does better when we are out and about because she can’t get up and walk away, since we are in the car or a public stall. I’m not sure how to get her to sit on the potty when she doesn’t want to. She will start screaming and crying, sometimes even pushing me or flailing if I try to force her to stay on for longer when I know she needs to go. When she does have accidents, she gets super upset and tells me that pee or poop goes in the potty. Any advice? Just seems so inconsistent, because some days she doesn’t fight me at all and other days she doesn’t want anything to do with the potty.

We potty trained my 29mo daughter last month and she got pee immediately. We had a few poops on the potty and in pullups during naps the first 2 weeks after that. But then last two-three weeks have definitely turned into withholding. She's only going once or twice a week. It's definitely mental -- says she's scared to poop / won't poop.

We started miralax today according to her doctor. Hoping for a poop in the next day or two (today is Thursday and her last one was Monday).

Researching this, though, I'm terrified. All the stories sound like we're in an impossible battle that will last years and will result in health issues, etc.

I'm hoping for some stories about people who went through some initial withholding but it turned out to not be a big deal / be manageable. Hoping there's some people out there and we're not doomed?

My son is 2 3/4. We’ve been using a soft approach to potty training…we’re about 4 months in, and overall it’s going OK. He’s a little unique in that he took to the potty for poos almost instantaneously…and from the get go, he would initiate every poo potty trip. Pee has been a lot harder. He was having a lot of accidents for a while, almost never initiating, and resisting peeing on the potty. Now, he mostly goes accident free during the day. And he initiates about half the times he goes pee on the potty. The problem is…he goes hours between peeing. I have tried to “force” more frequent trips to the potty, and he screams that he doesn’t have to go. And like I said…he’s accident free most days. The other day, he actually started to have an accident, while playing at the library, looked up at me, said, “I think I peepeed a little bit in my pants”, and we rushed to the potty and he had actually managed to stop himself and finish most of the peeing on the potty. Which was kind of a cool milestone for him I thought - especially while in the middle of playing!

But I’m worried because he will often go 4 or 5 hours between pees. I do force the issue before we go out, before nap, and before bedtime, and he has come to accept those “scheduled potty breaks”. However, any other times, if I try to force it, it results in a 20-minute protest session. And I mean…he’s not typically having accidents. So…is it possible this is just his body’s normal rhythm? Do I let it ride? I want to honor him listening to his body, and forcing more frequent trips seems like…not that. But I keep hearing that most people are taking their kiddo to the potty every hour or so.

What potty training method did you use? I have a 2.7 year old we waited per her pediatrician’s advice bc she was having constipation issues following an anal fissure.

I’ve read oh crap, the 3 day method book and I’m overwhelmed. The past 30 month window mentioned in oh crap has me feeling like a bad mom. I know it’s irrational. What method did you use specifically if your child was over 2.5 years old? I’m overwhelmed and don’t know where to start bc there’s so much information out there.

We started potty training my daughter who will be 3 in December 3 weeks ago. We did the weekend of no pants and she did great, by day 3 she had no accidents. Then she went to daycare and had a few accidents but learned pretty quick. We are now pretty much accident free when it comes to pee but she is having accidents frequently with poop. She was holding it for several days and with advice from her pediatrician we gave her miralax. She has had several poop accidents over the past few days and won’t go on the potty. She gets mad when we suggest it and runs the other way. She is having poop accidents at daycare and I honestly feel horrible making someone else clean her up. She won’t willingly go in a diaper or pull up either. Just straight up acts like she doesn’t have to go and then has an accident later. She gets so upset after the accidents but it just keeps happening. Does it just click one day?

Our daughter (3y) she used to go potty during the summer when she was staying at grandparents, she came back home and she refuses to use the potty. We kept the same routine of asking her and looking out for cues , as well taking her to the potty and so far the communication part is the one we struggled the most, most days she’s pee on the toilet maybe 2 times and then the rest is accidents everywhere. (The couch, the carpet, the mattress) I’m getting tired of cleaning🫩

We go with just a dress on top with nothing else, because we tried training pants (didn’t work) and underwear (sometimes is a hit or miss) . The only time I let her use an actual “diaper” is when she’s napping and sleeping at night.

We tried the reward method, didn’t work she would say po but only sat on the toilet and didn’t do anything and was getting rewarded. I’m a SAHM so I feel like I have time and I’m asking her multiple times if she wants to go potty, she says no but then accidents happen 🫩🫩

She uses the toilet when she poops and she would tell us , but she won’t do the same for pee.

Am I doing something wrong? Is she not ready? She’s 3 years old now, literally just turn 3 on the 13th . I’m watching her water intake . Heeelp

Hi hi. Lovely little girl. About to be 4. Charming, witty, smart, emotionally adjusted as much as can be expected. Disciplined, again, as much a possible. Will follow requests, ask for things, please thank you, follows direction outside. Has friends, family, is loved. In preschool. So much good for her, so its not a super concern although as always as a parent I worry.

Will not poop on the potty. Is back and forth with pee, although if we spend all day at home, fine. Sometimes rebels over it, does not have accidents at home, however.

Demands a diaper to poop in. Will hold for hours. Goes into bathroom of secluded hall to poop, is evasive, in a generally playful way, about being changed afterwards. Tries to tell us she has to poop just to get us to put a diaper on her so she doesn't have to use the potty, we're wise to that now.

How can I get her to reset and push thru this last step. I feel like we're behind here.

My 18 month boy has been telling me whenever he pees/poops and asking for his diaper to be changed for a few months now (he goes to diaper caddy and points, or stands on something to grab one to hand me, or comes to me and points to his diaper). I feel like this is a good sign he’s ready to start potty training, but it’s just so young I am nervous of it not going well and then delaying it happening.

My older son I tried potty training at 2 but that failed, and then he trained himself at 3. It was super easy because at 3 he was fully ready.

How would I go about potty training a toddler that can’t even talk yet?

Hello fellow suffering parents.

We started potty training my (almost) three year old and it’s not going amazingly well. He’s naked all Day and He will hold his pee in all day except for little drops in the potty occasionally. He’ll just say “I don’t want to go in the potty”, plain and simple. The only way I’ve gotten him to empty his bladder a couple times is to stand in the bathtub with the water running and pee into a red toy pot. Once he peed outside but he won’t do it again. Obviously this is not sustainable and he has to go back to daycare next week (this is day four of training).

We’ve tried treats, toys, praise, videos, songs, books, watching his dad and brother pee both in the potty and outside. He will say he needs to potty, go sit on it (both a chair in the living room and the seat in the bathroom) and maybe a drop or two, but no release. He’d hold it all day if I didn’t do the bathtub thing. He had on pants the other day and pee/pooped in them and was unfazed, but he did hold it the whole way to the doctor and back so he’s very capable of holding it, he just won’t release it.

I’m at my wits end, does anyone have a similar experience with a stubborn toddler who will hold it for five + hours? We pump him full of juice and it only seems to make him stronger, like a tiny baby hulk.

Please help us.

Hi there.

I am currently potty training my 2 year old boy. I need some guidance

1.He has his diaper dry for more than 2 to 3 hours

1. He has been sitting on a potty seat since he was 8 to 10 months old because I had to take him to the bathroom with me every time and he started to sit on is bath seat, so I switched it with a potty seat and he started doing poop in it early in the morning.

2. Now I am at my mum's house where I can train him for peeing in the potty seat as well even if accidents happen.

3. I have a 6 month old baby who is a velcro baby

4. Problems I am facing is that

. I have to make him sit on the seat every hour.

. He doesn't know how to take off his pants.

. He does tell me when he wants to poop but if I am busy with the small one he doesn't sit on his own

. He wants to play and not sit on the seat by himself

Please guide me if I should stop and try again soon. I have only 2 months left, after which I am going back home and it won't be possible for me to train him as I live with my in-laws

Hi, I'm a preschool teacher for 2 year olds. I have 8 children in my room + my coteacher and out of the 8 children, there is 1 fully potty trained child. Recently, our 1 potty trained child has started refusing to go potty and insist on mom picking her up and she will only go with mom. The children are in our care from 8:30 - 3:30. Mom has recently started calling at about 12 to check in and ask if she has gone yet and if she has not she will get picked up. The child has noticed this pattern and now ultimately refuses to go with the teachers. We have tried asking her in 20-30 minute intervals asking her if she needs to go, offering her stickers or small prizes, or even telling her mom has a surprise for her and she refuses and will wait for mom. I don't know. My concern is , is this enabling her behavior if shes getting picked up everytime? I understand she's only 2 years old, but we would want her to continue the school day. We are more than just a daycare and we have learning activities done throughout the day. It's probably not even a big deal, but it could be too. I have never had this happen in my years of working in preschools ever happen. Not sure what to do or even try, mom is also just as confused and has noticed it as well. Has anyone ever had this happen? Or is this something that shouldn't be a big concern of? I don't know

I wanted to share my experience in case it helps another parent going through this. Our 4.5-year-old was withholding poop for 5–7 days at a time, running around, screaming, and getting extremely upset whenever he felt the urge. This lasted a month and it felt like my husband and I were alternating between psychiatrists and psychos in the psych ward lol. He was peeing in the potty normally, but pooping became a huge source of stress for everyone.

Here’s what helped us:

• Regulating his nervous system: We focused on taking the pressure off and used phrases like “Your body knows how to poop” and “You’re safe; you don’t have to force it.”
• Rewards: Making screen time a reward and keeping candy and cookies visible in the bathroom as an incentive helped motivate him. We had him pick out poop toys on amazon and put them on an accessible shelf so he could always see them. Make sure you celebrate poop successes.
• Going bare-bottomed: We did a full week without bottoms, then transitioned to pants without underwear for another week until he was pooping consistently.
• Consistency: We learned that everyone caring for him needed to follow the same approach And language. Inconsistency led to setbacks for us.
• Medical guidance: Because he was withholding for so many days, we involved our pediatrician to make sure constipation or retained stool wasn’t contributing. Miralax was key.

It definitely wasn’t a straight line, and we had setbacks along the way. But he’s now been pooping in the bathroom normally for weeks, and we’re finally feeling like we’re on the other side of it!

Sharing because I know how isolating and stressful poop withholding can be. Every kid is different, but hopefully something here helps another family!

Hello,

I started potty training my toddler at 2 years and 3 months. She understood everything very quickly. Unfortunately she started withholding her poo.
So I went to the doctor and we used movicol for a clear out. We are on maintenance dose now. She has a soft poo every day. But she is clearly still trying to withhold all the time. We took a break from potty training as per doctor recommendation.

So she is back in nappies for 2 months and the problem has persisted.
I’ve tried books (she understands it all and seems delighted about it but still tried so with old).
Rewards for pooing - she likes chocolate but it isn’t a motivator.
I’ve tried talking about it/ignoring it.
I’ve tried showing her our potty routine - again she’s delighted and happy to see us use the toilet but won’t herself.
She’s not keen on blowing bubbles or doing relaxing exercises (I think because she feels the poo coming out).
She is an active girl and it’s hard to see her with old.
She is very smart and it is not a problem of understanding. It could be that I started too early and she wasn’t emotionally ready. So I tell her she’s safe and it won’t hurt etc. she agreed but still it’s like a habit now that she automatically withholds.

Any advice?
I’d like to break this cycle as soon as possible and get her trained. She’s very smart and I feel that she is ready. Happy to take it slow but want to make progress.

My 3 year old girl was potty trained and in underwear full time for the last year. She recently developed a UTI, and has been treated, but she seems to have regressed in peeing and pooping, as she now associates her potties to the pain she had while peeing during the UTI. She is still holding her pee, for the last week, and then having an accident. She does not say it hurts to pee, just remembers the pain from the potty.
She will not even sit on the potty, and cries and screams and fights when we try to sit her on it. She has now began declining taking showers as she knows we are just trying to make her pee in the shower so it's easier for everyone.
I think I'll start potty training again trom the start, she's already picked out a new potty we will buy and said she'll pee on it to earn stickers on the wall and mini ice creams, which was the original way she was potty trained and it worked FAST and easily.
Is restarting potty training and positive associations with using a potty the best way to go though? I'm wondering if letting her wear pull-ups again for awhile would be better for her for now. She had a very hard time with the UTI as our pediatrician informed us they no longer accept our insurance when I went to make her an appointment to get checked out, so we ended up at the children's ER, had a super long day there and resulted in her having us help hold her down while they inserted a catheter into her for just a moment to collect her urine sample. Obviously this was traumatic for her, so even more negative associations with the potty aside from just the pain while peeing.
Any advice is welcome. I don't want to prolong this process any longer than necessary as I'm also pregnant with twins, experiencing HG (iykyk) which makes much movement VERY hard for me, and the idea of having a 3.5 year old AND two babies in disposable diapers/pull-ups isn't ideal obviously. Tia!

Hi, I'm pretty new to potty training. My 21-month-old son will sign when he needs to poop and proceed to poop on the potty (provided he is sufficiently entertained into sitting on it long enough). Sometimes he will pee in the potty.

However, if I put him on the potty right before bath, he will refuse to sit, and then deliberately pee in the bath (he looks down before starting to pee, and I can see him flexing his muscles to pee on purpose, so it's not just a reflexive response to the water). Any advice?

I joined this subreddit 4 months ago because I was feeling nervous about potty training although it’s my second kid, she started to be interested in going to the toilet a few months before I started training but I was not prepared and waited until the second birthday. What I did with my 2 kids were the naked method, one week naked at home, I know it’s difficult for most people to stay inside with a toddler all day for a week but after that week both my kids were pretty much trained, what I personally recommend the most is to not waiver when you’re sick of accidents and cleaning, we stopped using diapers completely once the naked week started, then we introduced underwear and just used diapers at night, we had a flight after a couple of weeks training and still not use diapers, not for car rides, not for going out, there was no coming back, it may seem radical but honestly I think that’s what cuts the time training dramatically, it was more hard for me honestly because sometimes an accident makes you feel like you want to come back to the convenience of diapers, after 2 weeks of training she had one accident at daycare, maybe 2 at home and that was it she did good even in a flight, I had to take her to the very cramp bathroom though. At night she used a diaper but we stopped because a rash, I started putting her padded underwear and she had 4 accidents at night in 2 weeks, after that she wakes up to pee at night which is annoying because she wakes me up but I don’t see a way around it, and that was it, she’s fully potty trained. My two cents are do not despair and abandon, go fully no diaper no matter what once you decide to start, do NOT be mad at your child because accidents, even if they’re annoying it’s NOT their fault, we celebrate with a little dance the first weeks whenever she used the potty, Ms Rachel potty training episode is a good one, remember your kid that mom, dad, teachers, everyone use the potty and just patience. Good luck

We are trying to potty train our three year old. We have been unsuccessful for several attempts because he refuses to comply with putting on anything but a diaper. We recently moved houses, took his binky away, and are expecting another child any day now. So lots of changes in his life which we understand makes it more difficult.

We had him signed up for a part time day program to get him out of the house but because he would not potty train they would not take him.

With our next child coming any week now what could we do to try to make potty training successful? We had really hoped to have him acclimated to the school program before baby’s arrival…

My son is 3 years and 2 months old, and we've been doing potty training for 2 months now. I know it's slow but he's autistic and I'm being very patient. I'm also autistic and my own potty training took years so I never want to rush him.

He loves peeing on the potty, sometimes has accidents but mostly makes it to the potty. He's in pull-ups in the daytime, and he wets in his sleep so we do diapers at night and that doesn't seem to effect him any negatively, he knows he's not supposed to use it like a diaper, we use the "don't pee on _" method, he loves my little pony so we tell him "don't pee on the ponies, they don't like it". He will tell me and his other dad when he has to pee or poop. We always just try to take him every 2 hours anyway and most of the time he happily goes.

But for bowel, he has problems with withholding, so we've increased his fiber intake slowly and now he gets plenty, so it's soft enough he can't withhold but not so much his tummy hurts. I wasn't okay with daily miralax so we do fiber. Beans, veggies, fruit, fruit fiber bars, etc. He goes once a day.

I'll notice when he has to go because of his certain signals if he doesn't tell me, so I ask if he has to go, he says yes, I say "okay let's go to the potty now" and take him, and then he just starts sobbing that he doesn't want to go, and he'll hold it as long as he can even if I sit him on the potty. I've asked him if he wants to use his pull-up or a diaper instead, just because I don't want him in pain holding it or constipated, but he says he wants to use the potty.

He doesn't say it hurts or anything, the potty is comfortable and sized right for him, he'll only relax enough to calmly go before nap time or bed when he's tired, or when one of us is also pooping on the toilet, we give him his texture book to feel at while he sits and he does just fine. But outside of those two situations even with the texture book and everything else we've tried he says he just doesn't like pooping and wants to keep it in.

How can I get him to relax enough?

My recently turned 6 year old son still wets every night, currently we are using diapers to help him get a good nights sleep and minimize the cleanup. I’m curious at what age do most switch there kids from tape on diapers to pull-ups. For context he’s not bothered by them at all and we already buy them for his younger brother anyway so it minimizes buying something else.

So we started potty training around 22 mo with my son. We had no success the first week then switched to the oh crap method and over the course of a month and a half or so he became much more consistent we were down to approximately 1 accident a day. The last week or so though that has increased significantly he’s now just shy of 25mo and having 3-5 accidents a day. He does well when we’re out using public restrooms but is having way more accidents. We keep calmly reiterating that pee or poo goes in the potty. So is this a regression? I’m not sure if we just need to go back to being bottomless for a few days and work our way back up to undies? He stays dry for naps and only wears diapers at night. Nothing huge has changed in our day-to-day lives over the last 3-4 weeks. We’d appreciate any advice at this point? Thanks!

We are on day 4 of potty training… pooping scares her a little. Advice?

My daughter has done two poops on the potty in 4 days which I know is amazing, but both times she’s scared when it falls out into the little toilet and cries. I wipe her and then hug her and praise her and try to make it a positive experience. We have been reading everyone poops and Pete the cat goes potty to try and normalize things.

Any advice? I just want to normalize it for her so she’s less upset and I know it will probably take time.