Potty Training - Seattle,WA

For your daughter, offer a really non expensive, but nice gift....something she would like......maybe stickers to start out with......make a sheet (chart) and put them on there and show the days she goes etc......

For you son......start writing down the times he pees.....you can do this with your daughter too.......See if there is a pattern.....if so, then you will know when to take him............you can also take him, run the water in the sink, or even dribble a little on him.......a lot of times that works to make them pee......You can also buy a bulls eye to put in the toilet for him to aim at or even a piece of cereal.......making it fun for him.

Charts are nice, some kids really like them. Start out small with the prizes you give out for the results you get and then make it a little nicer once they get the idea....also, talk about being a big girl and boy.....how they will start school soon and how big they will be........how impressive....ect.......all praise is good......

Good luck and unfortunately, you may have a time schedule, but kids don't ......some learn faster than others and some are not ready when you think they should be........so you may want to have them trained by 3.5, but they may have a different idea, either way, be consistent and confident.

The best age for any child to train is when they are both emotionally ready for the commitment and when they've physically got the control and the urge recognition.

Training just drags on until then, and can have negative repercussions. Kids who are ready are excited about having that new choice, and generally train in a matter of days or a couple of weeks. Potty training is as natural for kids as walking and talking, and they are just as eager when they are able to do it.

I'm sorry your little girl has developed a problem with the pooping part. That is unfortunately a common side effect of parents directing their children to eliminate in the toilet. My own inclination would be to assure her that she'll know when she's ready, and you trust her to let you know as soon as she knows. If she's worried about pain or needs help softening her stools, you could try Miralax.

If you use the search box on this page, you can find many stories by moms who were pleased and surprised by how quickly their children trained after they stopped pushing for success. Good luck to you all!

I can't answer your question about pooping on the potty, but my three-year-old boy was like yours in that he would always poo on the potty, but the pee took a while. Finally we just put him in underwear one day and promised a big treat if he kept it dry. We did that over a weekend then went back to pull-ups during the week for a while but I realized that he was getting confused and so was sometimes peeing his pants when he had underwear on. So we moved to underwear one day and just never went back to pull-ups except at night. I think that helped him a lot because he got used to having to remember when he had to pee and he really has only had one accident in the past 5 weeks, when we began with the underwear full-time.
Hope that helps one of your children anyway!

Put regular underwear on him and only use pullups when he is going to bed. Expect some accidents and clean up. He will soon recognize potty time.Talk about what happened calmly and direct him to use the potty instead. Requires effort on your part???

Twins I assume? Congrats... along with twice the joy comes twice the frustration.

As for the girl, what happens when there are no pull ups for her to wear? I know it sounds aweful, but maybe she needs to get her underwear/pants dirty to realize how much better it is to go on the potty.

As for the boy... 3 years old is the second window for boys, so you are rigt in giving him a little more time. I have potty trained over 50 little boys, and it seems the age of 1.5, and then again around 3 are the best windows for getting them to go on the potty.

Good luck

My daughter didn't want to poop on the potty either. I finally broke down and told her that if she wanted to plan a "poo poo party" we could. We decided that we'd start planning it after 10 days of all poop going in the potty. We kept track on our calendar and we're well past 10 days now, closer to 2 months! She forgot about the party and has been pooping on the potty really well. The other thing we did was we had a stamp and ink pad in the bathroom. We never told her she had to poop for a stamp, but she told us that she would have a stamp after poop. My husband and I had stamps after poop (sorry about the TMI) and sometimes she did. It just worked for us.