Daycare Moms - Potty Training

I gotta say I am a little shocked at what you find offensive about your daycare provider. When I was going through potty training with my own kids, I said things like "Don't poop your pants, it's yucky." Hello...it is gross, and part of training your kids to use the potty to poop is to explain how gross it is. Also, potty training your child is your job. I was a little surprised that some of the other moms out there were happy that their daycare provider did a lot of the work. What's the point in being a mommy if you don't do all of the mommy work? I agree with Deb K about one thing...were I a daycare provider, I wouldn't want to dive right into someone elses kid's stinky underwear. It's a whole new ballgame when the diapers are gone, and your daycare provider should charge more for having to get the poop into the potty(that can be tricky sometimes)clean the kid up and rinse out the messy underwear. I see that this is your first child, and I think your expectations are a little high for not having gone through potty training before. You have no idea what it takes. It can be nerve racking, stressful, and I can only imagine the gross factor when it is not your own child. One last thing, after going through potty training with two kids(notice I say "going through it with them" not "training them")I have learned that you absolutely cannot force children to use the potty if they don't want to. They will do it in their own time and if you try the forceful way or bribery with sticker charts and such, you most likely will be the one getting trained. So, I have to side with your daycare provider. If you want your child to be potty trained a certain way, no ifs ands or buts, then you should be a SAHM.

After having worked in a parent's day out program for 4 years with one and two year olds, every time a mom brought in their child in underwear for the first time, telling us the child was potty trained, the child would -without exception- wet their pants. It was so frustrating as a childcare worker. We would have to use extra diapers (not provided by the parents as they didn't think they needed them!) and spare clothes, and then try to explain to irritated parents that their child would not go on the potty for us. They often thought that we were not getting them on the potty often enough. But the truth is, kids often do not 'go' away from home until they are much more established. Potty training is a process, and when they are away from home in a childcare setting or visiting friends or whatever, they are a lot more distracted, they may not want to stop with whatever activity they are doing, etc. My three kids never used the pottys away from home initally, not until they were pretty well established at home. And even then accidents happened way more often. You may decide to change your daycare, but I hope it won't be over that specifically. You have to be realistic about what your child will do away from home. Good luck!

I won't comment on your childcare provider other than she ISN'T going to help the challenge ahead. I will talk about potty training a boy. I potty trained my 3-year-old in less than two weeks. He had absolutely no interest in being potty training, so it was quite a challenge. Here's what worked for me. We decided to try adamantly for two weeks. If he wasn't potty trained by then, we'd stop and give it another month before trying again; however, it worked the first time. We banned diapers or pullups (except at night). He was only allowed to wear underwear and we bought him some with his favorite super heroes on them. We had to figure out how to make peeing in the toilet fun to him, so we put drops of food coloring in water and made colored ice cubes. We would let him pick out which color he wanted, then he would drop the ice cube in the toilet and have "target practice" to pee on the cube and make it melt. It would melt and change the toilet water color, which he thought was awesome! When that got boring, we used cheerios or anything we could find that was flushable. For pooping in the toilet, I had a stash of little toys - cars, stuffed animals, books - and he would get one if he went poop in the toilet. After several times, we resorted to stickers. After about 3 days, he never had another accident and was completely potty trained (including nighttime) after two weeks. Good luck! I hope some of these tricks work for you!

I do an at home daycare. I used to live in Aurora, but now I'm in Idaho. Anyway, I think providers are supposed to be able to help in the process, but parents are definitely supposed to do the main part of it. Also, it is rare to have a boy younger than 3 potty trained.

Boys are USUALLY a little slower than girls. I would suggest to get the book "How to Potty Train in 1 Day", read it, and come up with an action plan. Don't even let him know what pull-ups are!!! Use only real underwear when you potty train, expecting to have clean-up jobs. Make sure you put a mattress pad on his bed. I really believe that pull-ups are a set back in themselves. Then take 3-7 days off in a row when you don't have any plans or go anywhere. See how it goes and how quickly he does it. When it clicks, it clicks. If he goes poop about 4 times without an accident, then I would say he is ready. My 2 girls never did.

Then the first day back to daycare, put him in a pull-up and tell him they are underwear and see how he does. If he's dry after a week or two, then I say he's ready to not wear real underwear all the time. Have her go on board to at least ask him if he needs to go before they do another activity, go outside, eat, or take a nap because that's when they usually have accidents -- when they are side tracked and having too much fun. Tell her to make sure she calls them underwear and not a diaper or pull-ups.

Best wishes, D.

I am a mom who takes care of other children, and can tell you that at one point I was trying to potty train 2 boys at the same time. My DS and our neighbor's son are the same age and I was watching him at the time that we both decided to potty train. I think that as a provider that you need to work with the parents and assist them in their desires to have their child potty trained. I have been fortunate to be at home when most of my children were at this age and then have a VERY supportive sitter when our first was there. She actually did the ground work for us and we followed her lead because I was in school and my husband was working long hours. I think you just need to explain your training methods to the provider and ask that she continue with them.....if not you need to find another provider. I really don't think that moving your DS to another provider then to a preschool will be that traumatic, because they won't all happen at the same time....he will have time to adjust between those transitions. Besides preschool at his age won't be an all day thing, so he will still be at the daycare for part of the day. Good luck.
J..

CHANGE DAYCARE PROVIDERS! If you're not happy with her, you son probably isn't either.

Most daycare providers love kids and don't mind cleaning up messes. They love to help them out and teach them new things. When my daughter was ready, our daycare provider was more than willing to do whatever would help. She wasn't critical and did not get mad when accidents happened.

Find an in-home provider that also does preschool or at least teaches preschool principles.

WOW, S., you need new daycare. The entire potty training process took only 4 days in my house. And 2 of those 4 days were at daycare. She completely suprised me and it was completely my sons idea to start using the potty. Try www.thepottytrainer.com it worked wonderful for me. Your daycare provider does not sound like she has your childs best interest at heart. Or you best interest for that matter. My advice would be to sit down and really talk to your provider or find a new one and fast. She is your employee, not the other way around. I was supprised by my provider using unders at nap time even which I thought was a little early for. He just turned 3 in December and we only use pull ups now at bed time. I dont even put one on him to drive to daycare. It was my daycare ladies idea to not use the pull up at nap time because we dont want him to regress.
Good luck!!
J.

Hi Shanon, your sitter is probably just very lazy woman and what she is telling to your son could delay his potty training. The whole thing is very phsyhological for kids that small. I wa lucky to have an awesome teacher in daycare who helped potty train my daughter at age 2 1/2 within 2 weeks (OK, this is considered very short time, so don't expect miracles).
Here is how we did it: We talked to my daughter, me at home and her at school and told her that from tomorrow, we will be a big girl and use only toilet and big girl panties. I took her to the store and let her pick her own panties and in the morning after she woke up we said bye bye to dipers and put her new panties on.
We would put her on potty every 30 min, whole day and let her do her thing. If she did it we made a huge fuss of happiness about it and if she didn't we tried to explain it is OK and that she will do better next time. And we did it every day and soon it was done. I never used diper again not even at night and I think this expedited the process. We had only few accidents at night and in few days she would get up and ask to go.
It worked for us, good luck..
If you cannot work with your sitter to do what you do and if she puts your son in dipers, it will send a wrong message and he will reject all of it.
Wish you good luck and polease let me know if you need more info.

I keep coming back to the sentence "She's been doing daycare for 15 years and doesn't want to clean up kids' messes." So, for 15 years she's had kids show up at her door with mom and dad swearing the kids is trained (at 2.5? not typically) and had to deal with the subsequent setbacks, as there are ALWAYS setbacks. Especially when parents treat training as a 'weekend' thing and not as the 'process' it truly is.

I don't blame her for being cautious. If this is the first time you've done this potty training thing I'd say: Stop. Reset your expectations. Chill out. Out of all the things you can push your child to do, this is one to skip.

Now, if you're unhappy with your provider and your gut check says its time to find a new one, then by all means, do. Frankly, they're two separate issues. GL!

As a daycare provider myself, when you initially started with her outlines and plans of what her and your potty training plans were should have been established.

I can say personally, unless otherwise discussed, potty training a child isn't in my job description. I can help with what the parents have done at home, encourage the child to go every hour, put them on the potty and such, but I wouldn't dive into underwear either.

If I have two or three other kids to manage I don't have the time to micro manage potty training messes, would you want your son in a home where poop was on the floor by another child? Poop on the floor is a health hazard she has to think about the other kids too.

If you did discuss this and now she is changing what she agree to do, be upset, I agree with you. Did you talk to her about your potty training plans when he started there?
Are you just looking for a reason to stop using her? Be honest with her, believe me we appreciate that. We need to hear your honest concerns and have a chance to sit down and discuss it. If she isn't flexible for you then I say give her notice. If you are really fed up, pull him out and find a daycare provider that will potty train.

Daycares will help however even big ones, take the kids together in a group and they go or don't, they change messy pants and send them home with you. If you send them in underwear and they make a mess of course they have to clean it up. Some preschools won't even let your son in until he is potty trained. Because they aren't going to be responsible for the mess either.

Pullups is and always will be my choice on potty training and I did it very successfully with two of my own kids and one that I watch and have for a few years. If the parents did something else at home that is their decision at home. I don't want to clean poop out of my carpet for my child or anyone else's. I did it just fine with pullups and when it was done no accidents or anything else. I actually initiated it for the boy I watch and his parents were grateful I got him on board and done!