I have finally decided to write a post on potty training after trying to potty train my 27-month-old daughter for more than a month without much success.  Partly, I did not want to write about it because who wants to write about your child failing to potty train when you know a few people whose two-year-olds have been potty trained for a while.  In the end, I decided to write it because I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have.  Also, I’m hoping this post will help some of you out there, who have been through something similar or who are planning on potty training your little one(s) in the near future.

One day, when my daughter was 25 months old, I decided to start toddler potty training after reading that you should do it as soon as your child turns two.  I decided to try the three-day method which almost ended in disaster.  Basically, with this method, you put your child in underwear and you have take her to the potty every 20 minutes or so.  After a few hours your child is supposed to start understanding what she has to do.  Well, the first day was full of accidents on the floor and no signs of my daughter understanding.  Second day was almost exactly the same, but I was definitely starting to get a little frustrated.  By the third day, I was more than a little frustrated and my daughter was starting to hide from the potty.  After less than three full days, I knew I had to stop using the three-day method or we both would have gone insane.  I later read online that a lot of people had problems with the two or three-day methods and that some of the toddlers even ended up having psychological issues.  I am so glad I stopped using the method before causing some major damage.

After I stopped using the three-day method, I decided to put my daughter back in diapers, but that did not last more than a day because she just did not like diapers anymore.  After talking to some great moms on Twitter, I started taking it easy and my daughter relaxed quite a bit as well.  This more relaxed approach is definitely easier on both of us, but more than a month later, she’s still not potty trained.  Most of the time I don’t complain, but once in a while I’m tired of changing her pants 3-4 times a day since the underwear she wears most of the time does not hold much.  Sometimes, I wonder whether she thinks of underwear and trainers as diapers. She did wear comfortable cloth diapers after all.  They were a bit thicker than underwear, but still quite comfortable.  I suspect it would have been a bigger surprise to her if I had switched her from disposables to underwear, instead of cloth diapers to underwear.

Thanks to the relaxed potty training, I have noticed some improvements:

• My daughter urinates less during the day now.
• Her night-time diaper is usually dry or slightly wet in the morning.  Before we started potty training, her diaper was soaking wet in the morning.  I suspect her diaper would be dry more often, but we’re a bit lazy in the mornings and do not get up right away to take her to the potty when she wakes up.
• Once in a while, she’ll totally surprise us by going to the potty herself and actually pee in it.

Have you been or are you potty training your own kids or someone else’s kids?  Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you in advance for leaving some comments!

Picture by jbird (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbird/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)