Yes, Another Potty Training Question.

You sound a lot like us, minus the twins. My daughter turned 3 in December and my son is 1. She had been interested in the potty for a year. we tried off and on with different tactics. Finally one of her friends got a big girl (twin bed). She has been in a twin bed for 1.5 yrs but no comforter or nice sheet sets so I asked if she wanted a new bed (which translated into bedding) for potty training. She was potty trained in a week. It just took time, patience and the right incentive.

If they have shown they understand the concepts by using it on their own some of the time, then they are ready. I put my son in big boy pants, and told him he was now a big boy. That first day he had 13 accidence and was begging for his pull up, but I said no, you are a big boy now. The next day he had 2 accidence, and then 1 and then none. He never got in trouble for having accidence, he just knew he had to keep trying. Often, the first day they will pee a lot to see if they can have control of the situation and force you to put them back in diapers. You have to keep the control, and they will learn.

When my oldest daughter (now 7) was getting to potty-training age I had a few friends with kids the same age tell me they tried to force the potty training issue and sincerely regretted it. Lots of accidents and battles, etc. Their advice was to just patiently wait until my daughter let me know she was ready. She had first showed interest 3 months before her 3rd birthday and my husband and I excitedly got out the potty chair and started (prematurely) to celebrate the end of diapers! Of course, she then dropped potty training like a hot potato. That was when my friends gave me their advice. So, we put the idea on the back burner, though I was nervously thinking ahead to preschool in the fall. But in June (3 months after her 3rd birthday) she took an interest again and trained really quickly and easily. I know there will always be some children who will hold out on potty training much longer than others, but I truly believe that pushing young kids to fit external timelines makes for a much longer, stressful transition. Their bodies will be ready when they're ready, not when some book or preschool schedule says they need to be ready. That's probably true for many issues, not just potty training. Good luck!

My son was 4 and still in diapers, dry at night but refused to be "trained" until I was talking to his 4 year old teacher. She said I don't diapers and prefer not to take children that are not "trained". All his friends were going! So he was "trained" in a day. I did nothing. Literally nothing. He never wore another diaper or made a mistake.

You can't make a child be "trained". He will choose to be "trained when he or she wants to, otherwise you will be trained to pick him up and take him to the bathroom.

Have you heard of a book called "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" by Nathan Azrin? He developed his methods to toilet train institutionalized individuals who were profoundly mentally retarded, and was successful. After learning how much trouble parents were having training their children, he adapted his methods and wrote this book. It's was written over 20 years ago. I successfully used his program to toilet train first my son, then my daughter, in one day. (They are now young adults.) They're not twins, and I did the training before they were 2 1/2. The book includes a "readiness test" to assess if your child is developmentally ready. I was a psychology major in college, so I was comfortable with the methods he used. You do need to have a day to devote to each child, so your husband or someone else would need to take the other two children for 6-10 hours. I decided to try and toilet train my son before we took him on a Mexican vacation. At that time, Mexican disposable diapers were terrible, and we did not want to bring along a 3 week supply of Pampers. He still needed a diaper at night, and sometimes during naps, but we did not have to bring along a suitcase full of diapers. Everywhere we went in Mexico, our son announced he had to go potty. My husband got a tour of all the public restrooms. What a treat!