Potty Training - South Lyon,MI

Is she wearing the pullup all the time as her underwear? Children look at the pullup as being the same as a diaper and they are more appt to use the bathroom in them. Try getting her underwear of a charactor that she likes forsay if she likes dora or spongebob then buy her some underwear with them on it. Make it a big thing that she picks them out and she will wear them and not go potty in them. I would only use the pullups at night or if you are going on a long drive, where she might not make it to the bathroom. Good Luck!

Take off her diapers, pull ups, and underpants. Put a long t-shirt on her (goes past her knees so she is covered) and nothing else. Let her cruise around the house in this outfit. Without the safety of something to "catch" the accident she will use the potty. I did it with all my kids for a weekend (my kids are 2.5 year old girl,4 & 5 year old boys)and after the weekend and maybe 1-2 accident they were trained.

Sounds crazy but my kdis doctor rec. it and it worked perfect.

Good Luck

My advise would be to first get rid of the pull-ups. They don't work. I bought panties and rubber pants for my then 2 1/2 year old daughter. We had the books and the DVD's too. The thing that worked the best was the incentive to go to preschool. That worked like a charm. I am starting to potty train my 2 1/2 year old son now, and boy oh boy was my daughte easy!!! Good luck, when THEY are ready they will do it.
Lisa

The last thing you want to do is go back to diapers! You have to stay firm and on track. My daughter LOVED her diapers. I had to finally take the diapers away from my husband and once I did that she was able to be potty trained. I would tell her that she is a big girl now and that the diapers went bye bye and now she has to do her bathroom business on the toilet. Maybe you can give her a reward each day for 2 weeks for good job well done. You may even want to do a graduated reward for the first week. Have 3 prizes that she can be rewarded with. One just a little better than the other. If she doesn't have any accidents then she gets the best reward. If she has one accident then she get the next best reward and so on. The second or third week I would only offer one reward. It takes 21 days to change a behavior.
C.

what worked well with my son was EVERY time he went to the potty we let him have a dumb dumb sucker. After he mastered the #1 part and was having troubles with the #2 we made it only after going #2. It doesn't have to be the sucker, but try something that she really loves. Stickers, candy anything should work. Hope this helps

I say take away the pull-ups. I never used those with my oldest (alomst 4) and he was potty trained 2 weeks after his 2nd birthday. I have seen people use the pullups for 2 years and wonder why they still have problems. At 2 years old we went straight to underwear and taking him to the bathroom every half an hour, no diapers not even at night. The first day he had 6 accidents, and for the first week we did a lot of laundry but believe it or not, no accidents at night. Everyday the accidents got less and by the end of the 2nd week he was really good. He continued to have about one accident a week for another month or two but then we were done. And he never had an accident away from home, that told me that he knew exactly what he was doing even at 2 years old. #2 took a little more work and we offered one M&M if he went or one hershey kiss, etc. Best of luck. We are starting potty awareness with our 19 month old now, he has gone on the toilet a couple of times but we are waiting for the no diaper training till he is 2 and hoping to have him potty trained by 2 years also. It is so nice to not have to spend all that money on diapers.

hello D.
let me start by asking you why you are still using pull uo if she been trained with all five of my girls whan i set out to potty train it was all the way we put big girl pant on first thing after are morning pee and three of them were ready with out the nite pull up and all by the age of 2 so give panty a try all the time (my youngest told me it was ok to pee and poop in a pull because it won't get her dress wet)lol

She will figure it out. Try not to stress about it. The more you stress the more it won't work. I have a 3 1/2 year old granddaughter that I care for and she has been wearing underpants during the day and a diaper at night. She knows what she has to do and most times she does it. So just hang in there and you will see. Hope this helps

M.

Mother of 19 year old girl and 23 year old boy. Also a premire care giver to my 3 year old grandaughter

D.
My name is T. and my kids are now 28 and 29 BUT - one thing that work is find a candy (M&M's) something small and wont make a big difference with eating her breakfast or lunch or dinner. If she does # 1 -3 M&M's #2-3 M&M's. We called this pee pee candy to the kids. Good luck : > )

I recommend going back to cotton diapers. It's o.k. This is part of exploring boundaries, relationships, and growing up. Cotton diapers tend to not be as comfortable when wet and poopy, so the allure and attention getting technique will soon lose it's thrill. Take care.

Most children will have a regression of some sort during the training time. I would get rid of the pull-ups and the diapers. Pull ups had not been invented when I trained my 3 girls, but I think the pull-ups give the feeling of a diaper. She obviously knows what is going on and in panties will really FEEL what's going on. Instead of threatening the return of the diaper, try the "don't go on your pretty panties" All kids are different...2 of mine were trained at 2 1/2. The third was over 3. Good luck!

Hi D., My daughter potty trained early too and then took a few steps backwards. It can be frustrating. We made a big deal of big girl underwear with her. Everytime we went to the store I would swing by the pretty big girl underwear untill she started asking if we could go look at them. I would tell her that in order to be a big girl and get to wear all these fancy underwear she would have to stop going potty in her pull ups and only go in the potty like all big girls. It only took a couple of weeks and she was working hard at going potty in the toilet not her pants. Hang in there be creative, set goals for her that you know she wants and you'll get there.
P.

Don't use pull ups because they just feel like a glorified diaper. I went straight from diapers to underware and it worked great. Of course there will be accidents and it is nerve racking to go out in public not knowing if your child will have an accident, but I would try it. I didn't put a diaper on when we went out and I also did the same for nighttime and she was instantly potty trained. I know it might not work for everyone, but it might be worth a try. Good luck.

When I potty trained my 3 kids, a 13 year old boy, an almost 12 year old boy and a 7 year old daughter, I took them to the store and let them pick out big boy/girl underware. Then I let them wear them in the house, with rubber pants over them. I told them that they did not want to go potty in their big boy/girl pants. It worked quite well.

HI D.! I would encourage her to be potty trained by showing her big girl panties and let her know that when she starts going like a big girl then she can pick some out at the store that she would like! Especially her having an older sister, seems like she would like to be more like the sister. I used a chart , kept it right in the bathroom everytime they go potty like a big girl they got to add a star for that day. If they had accidents-not going like a big girl then we took away a star. At the end of the day we would see how many stars we had left and add up, then for every star they got to stay up after bedtime 1 minute for every star which can add up to 5-10? So with that extra time we would either read another bedtime story or sing bedtime songs! u would be surprised how they can look forward to those few extra moments of one on one times with the parent!!! Good luck!!

www.sesamestreet.com has a great video clip about potty training with elmo and the gang. It helped us through it. Go to the Games section to find it.

When my daughter was almost 2 1/2 I was sick of the maybe she'll go and maybe she won't (going back and forth just drove me crazy) but I didn't let her know that. So I took her to pick out big girl underpants so she would feel important and hopefully mean more to her and just stuck to it. There's no going back in my opinion. She told me that pull ups were diapers so I never really used them (unless we were going someplace I really didn't want an accident to happen). She's never wet the bed either she always wakes up and screams for me to go (we got really lucky for that). She didn't like being in wet underwear or the feeling of it running down her leg and she caught on in about a week. I had to keep a close eye on her and everytime she had an accident I ran her to the potty so she would relate going potty to going potty on the potty. That was tiring and got old quick but you just have to push through it. She never had a problem with #2, thank goodness. She would have some accidents here and there after that week because she liked to hold it for so long but I just made sure I always had a spare set of pants and underwear for her. Every child is different but this worked for her. Once she got into preschool at 3 she never had a problem after seeing all the other kids going on their own. Peer pressure helps too sometimes for that.

Good Luck and hopefully this will help
K. W

Hi D.,
I myself have two girls ages 2 & 4 years. I am currently potty training my youngest and I just wanted to you know that I can sympathize with what your going through and just remember that consistency is key and just be patience.

Take away the pull ups and diapers. My son would not train one bit so I decided to just take the diapers away and within a few days he was using the potty. He still wont go number two on the potty but that will be coming soon. My son just didn't mind going in his diaper so I had no choice but to take them away. Anyway if she was doing well why was she still in pull ups or diapers. Also the worst thing you could do is to tell her that she is gonna have to be put back in diapers. That might be what she wants and you will be giving it to her. Not a good idea.

D., my name is J. and my heart goes out to you. My first child (a girl) came out of my body with a mind of her own and cannot be forced into anything. Honestly, she was not potty trained until 4 - almost 4 1/2. At the time I was thinking of trying, my son was born, so I waited a few more months. The only way that was successful to me (with her) was getting the book "How to Potty Train in One Day" from a friend of mine. Possibly you could find this on Amazon or Ebay? It was my salvation with her. Basically you have to devote a few days with a pillowcase filled with some toys that they love but they cannot see. When they make a "deposit" in the potty, they get to "withdraw" one without looking. My daughter LOVES stuffed animals, so this was awesome. For #2 - she resisted. My mother found these huge bunnies (around Eastertime) at Walmart and put one at a time on the back of the couch - those were for #2's. It didn't take long after that. The most encouragement I could do for you is to be good to yourself during this time. Get take out for dinner for a few days - don't demand too much of yourself as you help your child with this - be realistic with your energy and time. I never knew pee-pee and poo-poo could be so tiring! And keep the washing machine going...

God bless you as you keep going - I hope this message helped...

My youngest daughter will be 3 in April, my oldest is also 4 1/2. Trisana started potty training in late January/early February and we've had bumps like you. She treated the pull-ups like diapers, and really views them the same so we had to move to cloth training pants with vinyl covers (can get them at Meijers in the baby stuff). We still have some bumps, although the last two weeks have been good - for both. We did put her back in diapers when she had a bad day - for only a few hours. She doesn't like to wear them, so she quickly changed the habit back to the good. Each child is different - this may not work for you. The feeling of wet or soiled panties is a lot different than pull-ups or diapers, and we've been more successful using them with both our girls than we ever were with pull-ups. You may want to go that route. For both girls we used a reward system - one week of accident free days results in a "Token" (we used Dora tokens) that could be exchanged for $1 per token to buy what they wanted. Not only does it offer encrouagement & reward - but a sense of money as well. Hang in there though, as you know, it will get better. Each child is different, I know that I have had cousins in diapers at 4, and my daughter has class mates (pre-school) in pull ups still. The school even stocks them in the bathrooms!!

Don't give up and THROW the pull ups away!!! :) I have potty trained 3 kids now, 2girls and a boy. The only time I have ever used pull ups is when we will be running lots of errands in a day. It means a little extra clean up work on your part but I have never liked using pull ups. They are no different than diapers. Put her in underwear and be prepared for accidents. There will be accidents but in my experience my kids get so sick of all of the clothes changing that they train quicker. My son especially did not like needing to take so much time out of playing to change when he was wet. All 3 of my kids have been trained shortly before or by their 3rd Birthday by sticking to this. I believe if you waiver back and forth between pull ups and diapers it will take your child longer because you are letting them get away with it.

Another trick I picked up this last time around is using a timer. My son again did not like taking the time to go sit on the potty but if I set the timer for every hour he knew when it went off it was time to at least try to go. I think with my son I did the timer thing every day for roughly a week and if he started to take a step back a day we would go back to the timer here and there. Of course stickers on a potty chart if he did go were a must!!

Hope this helps.... :)

Whatever you do, I wouldn't make a big deal out of this or make her feel bad. That could set up a power struggle that could last another year! Sometimes they revert back for a few months. Take it in stride. At some point, she'll really want to follow through, and she will, but it may not be now. Her emotional well-being is the most important thing, though it'd be easier for you to have her trained. You always want to choose your battles carefully as a parent, and this is one you could make much worse by getting upset about it.

G. B.

just keep at it, it's normal for the kids to revert during training. i would encourage you not to go back to diapers, kids like to test boundaries. instead of telling her that she'll have to go back to diapers, let this be a tool to get rid of the pull ups. let her know that she is a big girl and needs to use big girl pants. it might be tough but she'll get it :-)

The one thing that I can say is get rid of the pull ups. I have found that they make it harder to potty train. Just do like we all used to do go to underpants. I know that the pull ups are convienent. But with the underpants it should only take up to a week to get them trained. They don't like the feeling of being wet to their toes.