Preschooler Potty Training - Birmingham, AL

Don't feel bad I have 3 1/2 year old twins that are the same way. I am not going to fight with them to do this thing called potty training. They will do it when they are ready. I have several friends whose children were 4 before they were potty trained. Don't feel like a bad mom. There will be plenty of advice and believe me I have tried them all they are not interested. One day he will come to you and say "mommy I am dirty" or something like that and you will know. Also you have to be ready. This is the milestone that I dread the most with twins. They have been late in everything and I have worried until I made myself sick. I guess you are a stay at home mom or daycare would be on you about being potty trained? It 's okay no child ever went to kindergarten not potty trained. I have decided this summer will be a good time when I can just let them run around in their big girls underwear and nothing else so I don't have to keep changing their clothes. If you want support my email is ____@____.com Just keep talking about the potty and he will eventually get it. gail

I know this will be messy but real underwear on him and see how he acts when he is wet or messy. That worked with my son. He did not like it running down his leg and into his shoes and he could smell it worse and he did not like that either.

When you do this and he asks for a pull up back tell him no he has to go in the toilet and wear big boy underwear.

I have a very strong willed little boy of my own. Pull ups did not work for him. To him they were just a different kind of diaper. I had to buy the cloth potty pants. With those he knew when he had made a mistake and he did not like the way they felt when they were wet or dirty. Give them a try and see if you make any progress. It is more work on you when he does have an accident, but it will be worth it in the long run.

When I taught pre-school our 3-4 year olds were niot allowed to wear pull ups due to hygene regulations set up by the state of Alabama, the only acception was if your child's classroom had a diaper changing station, immediatley in their room not in any other room. WE were fine with accidents and often had to convence parents that children do have accidents even into elem. school, trust me i have seen it several times when I taught K-4. My thought on the pre-school is for you to continue to work with him the rest of this week and and over the weekend and send him in big boy pants Monday with a change of clothes and remove all of his pull-ups from the Day care.

You are not going to like my suggestion. Get rid of pullups.
It will be messy. He needs to experience some unpleasant consequences, like wet messy clothes, and your impatience with him as you have to clean him up. Children used to get potty trained far earlier, and I have concluded it is because of the disposable diapers, and pullups making life so much easier for mothers that the kids don't really experience much displeasure for their accidents. Putting him with potty trained children who will mock him when they see he isn't potty trained also gets the point home. Peer pressure can be used positively.

Send him to a little bit of day care, even just a couple of hours a week will help. when they see other kids using the potty it clicks, it's like magic!!! K.

sounds like you are off to a great start!!!. A couple of things. accidents at night are common in children and completely age appropriate until about age 12. So, don't be suprised or upset with accidents at night. continue with pull ups or rubber training pants when sleeping. We did for naps and nights for about 18 months after potty trainng. Once, he was doing it himself and put them on over underwear. ok. it certainly helped. THe night time accidents taper off and my son now 8 hasn't had one in almost a year.

number 2. is this a preschool or daycare? remember they work for you and your son. while they need standards and he is big for not being potty trained. my son's preschool teacher was a huge help in potty training and suggested underwear to encourgage remembering.

If it is preschool for just a few hours you might give the underwear a chance. maybe use rubber pants over the first couple of times but with a lot of coaching and talking for a couple of days before it might be the beginning of a beautitul thing.

My daughter was the same way at three! The only thing that worked with her and still works to this day is to make her wear underwear. As long as she has on panties she won't pee or poop in them. Even now that she is almost four if she has on a pull-up she will go in it. Good luck!

All of the boys in my husbands family potty trained by peeing off the front porch. So when it was time for our son to start training, I did the same thing. It was a game to him, he would come out of his room and actually pass the bathroom to pee off the front porch. I know that sounds redneck or really country, but it worked. When my sister-in-law was having problems with her boys, I told her to give it a try. My nephew was bashful at first, but once it became a game, it was smooth sailing. Of course there are the usual games to try, putting cherrios or fruit loops in the toilet and let him "aim" for them. See if he can hit one or two or three, encourage him by making it a game. Get all excited when he hits one.

My advice that has worked for both of my kids is to only use pull ups at night for the first 2 weeks, to get him used to not wanting to have his underwear wet. Once he gets use to this not so good feeling try to not use them at night you may have to put a trash bag under them they also do not like this because of the sound. For at night no drink for 2 hours before bed, if they can not do with a drink try to get them down to maybe 2 ounces right before bed. I have a 4 year old who has beed potty trained for 2 years now and my 8 year old was potty trained and completeley out of pull ups before she was 2. If you have any questions feel free to email me at ____@____.com

Your day care should be working with you, and not against you.

Tell them you will send extra clothes and underwear and they will help hime potty train or you will move him to another day care. It sounds like they are lazy and don't want to deal with the mess.

The day care may be part of the reason he is not fully potty trained, they should have been working with him all this time.

My youngest is almost three and his day care suggested we start putting him in underwear. We just send extra clothes for the accidents, and the wash them and put them back in his cubby.

Hi K.,
There was only one thing that worked for my son. I had him stay in a certain area of the house with nothing on from the waist down. He did not like to have it run down his leg. It took one day. He was 4 months short of his 4th bday when he was trained.
Good luck,
S. R
Mother of 5

I am certainly no expert in the potty training field but I can tell you what worked for me. I have a 2 year old little girl and I started by taking her to the potty every hour and having her sit there for about 10 minutes. We usually read books while she was sitting there. One day right before bath time she used the potty and she has been potty trained since that day. I know it always isn't that easy so I hope you find something that works for you but you may want to try taking him every hour and establish a routine of going potty even if he doesn't go. I still rewarded my daughter for sitting there even if she didn't go but the day she went we made a HUGE deal about it and she got so excited and wanted to keep doing it. She has been potty trained for 3 months now and still gets excited when she goes cause we always praise even though she has been completely potty trained for a little while now. I hope you find a solution. I know it's hard. They told my daughter's preschool class that the couldn't go to the 3 year old class next year until they were completely potty trained and there are a large number of kids in her class that still aren't so I know there are a lot of parents in your shoes. As for the daycare situation, you need to sit down and have a talk with his teachers and let them know that they have to work with you and use the same schedule of pottying that you use with him. There has to be consistency. I had a talk with my daughters teachers and they were great about keeping with my schedule. Now she tells them when she has to go but starting out they have to work with you. Good luck!

I pottie trained my son for 3 years! I tried everything, literally! Finally I took him to the Dr. She gave him medecine to soften his stool. Apparently he did not enjoy the pain of bowel movements. Go to the Doctor. I tried suppositories, and laxatives, and all the natural laxitives nothing ever worked except the medecine the doctor gave me. The pain, worry and fear of having a bowel movement all those years is still fresh in my sons mind. to this day we keep his medecine handy and if he goes two days w/out a BM he asks for his medecine. He was 5 1/2 when we finally got everything back on its natural course and all it took was a little trip to the Dr. If only I'd done that 2 years earlier. I thought we were both going to have to go to couseling, lol!

Check out what John Rosemond has to say. I think his website is www.johnrosemond.com, but I'm not sure. He's written several good books as well as a nationally syndicated newspaper column. His advice is very common sense/logical and so far, has worked very well with our kids. Good luck

Just because they make pull-ups in his size doesn't mean he should wear them. I know this suggestion is going to be alot of work...(trust me, I work full-time and still have to do this for my two-year-old). You are going to have to put him in underwear! Not the padded kind either. Plain cotton underwear. Take him to the store and let him pick his favorite character. Talk to him about the character's feelings if he were ever to be "used the bathroom on". Then let him know that if he does mess up his undies HE has to throw them in the trash.
You probably need to look into another pre-school that is willing to work with parents on their child's development. They just seem a little lazy to me.
A pull-up is okay for him to sleep in. Just take him to the bathroom before he goes to bed, and again before you go to bed.

My granddaughter will be 4 in June and she is the same way as your son. She even changes her own wet pull ups. I would just like to know what kind of other responses you may get so I could pass it along to my kids. Thanks

Keep at it. I was right where you are at one time. My oldest son was almost 4 before he was trained. I just knew I would be sending Depends in his backpack to 1st grade one day. (I didn't by the way).

Keep trying the underwear and no pull-ups, especially during the day. I found some washable pull-ups with plastic on the outside for him to wear at night. These were better than pull-ups for training because they felt wet to him. I bought them where you can buy the cloth diaper accessories - don't remember exactly where.

When I trained my other two boys. I used very few pull-ups - only for church and night. I washed a lot of clothes, but they trained so much faster and easier. I also tried to stay home as much as possible during the time I was training them.

This stage can be so frustrating, but it only seems like it lasts forever!!

My son, who is now 11, didn't not potty train until he was 3 1/2 years old. It was extremely frustrating because he seemed so big to not be going to the toilet. He would even tell us to leave the room so he could go in his diaper. I was a working mom and he stayed with my mom and she really worked with him at home. Of course, we got tons of advice from everyone and nothing seemed to work. I felt like he would start Kindergarten in a diaper!! Thankfully my mom was very patient and would say, "He'll do it when he's ready." So, I kind of took some of the pressure off of him, but still worked with him, and one day she said he went on his own, took his pants and diaper off and got on the toilet and went to the bathroom...and from that moment on, he was trained. I know it seems like that's impossible and I wouldn't believe it, but that is truly how it happened. I hope this encourages you.

Im with Sara! Get rid of the pull ups. You can go to babybestbuy.com adn get him some traing pants for 1 a pair. They are just like underwear but have a plastic thing on the outside so you don't have to clean up as many messes! Once you start, stay consistant!

Ok I know everybody has given alot of advice, but this is what we did. Ours was more a battle of wills than bladder control.

1. We let him choose his own underwear, and made sure it had the face of the character on it. He thought it would make the character sad if he pooped or peed on them.

2. We did put the cereal Oh's in the potty, but that didn't work. So, we used BUBBLES in the water. Bubble bath or the little bottles of them both work fine.

3. We had a STICKER CHART, and we did this in stages. Go get the bags of plastic dinsaurs or gummy bugs from the dollar store. Each one is a prize, and put them in a bucket so he can choose himself.
- 1 sticker for pee 2 stickers for poop = one prize for each sticker
- when he starts to pee well 1 sticker for pee 2 for poop = two stickers equal prize
- when he does really well at pee = 4 stickers equal prize
- when he masters pee = 6 stickers for a prize for the next week and a half and you should be done
- graduate the poop sticker the same way. It may take longer, but positive reinforcement will work.

We potty trained in a week and a half with this, and continued the stickers for another week and a half. You may want to give up, but don't everyone else has wanted to do the same at times. You may also have to use a pill up at night time only until he gets use to having to control his bladder. Remeber you not only are trianing the behavoir you are training the bladder. The night time accidents will decrease as he gains more control. If they do not stop after training has been completed for a month or two consult your doctor.

H.

Mother to two great kids 5 years old and 7 months. Married to a great guy for 7 years.

First get rid of the pull ups. They act a lot like a diaper and take the wetness away from the skin. Put him in big boy underwear, perhaps let him choose a particular design - Spongebob helped me alot. With underwear he will be able to feel the wetness on his skin and how uncomfortable it can be.

Also now that the days are getting warmer let him run around with no underwear on and have the potty near. I've always had better luck potty training in the summer.

Reward charts help too. Have a sticker for when he performs and set goals.

Hope this helps.

I used "Potty Training in Less Than A Day" although I didn't follow it exactly. I put my son (age 3 1/2)in underwear and tried to play outside a lot! He had a few accidents the first day or two, but in a week he was pretty much trained. We did use M&M's (one for pulling down pants, for sitting on the potty, for pulling up pants, and he got two or three for actually using the potty). We used feel-and-learn pull ups for going out in public...but we tried to just stay home! We also used pull ups at night for a couple of months to be sure he could get through the night. (We called them night time underwear!) I have a friend who said she just showed her son what to do and talked it up, then left him alone about it (keeping him in pull ups)until he was ready...one day she saw him in the bathroom and congratulated him on being a big boy. She said it was very low stress for everyone. (Unfortunately, I think if I had done this method, my son would have been 5 or 6 before he was trained!!)

Good luck! He'll get there!

Some children are slow to potty train because of weak bladder muscles. First I would rule out any medical concern. Some children feel insecure that they have little or no control over events in their life and this is the one thing they have control over. There are severall excellent books on potty training at your local library. Good luck.