Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Is my 2 year old gifted?

I've had her run around in just underwear (I use a pull up over that to help with the mess)... I'm afraid to have her running around half-naked because of the mess. We're in the process of trying to sell our house right now and the thought of drying up pools of piddles is not exactly going to help matters. When I re-introduce the potty, I may put a potty chair close by -- thanks for the tip.

Well, I'm a mom of two, and I agree 100% with your philosophy, acs.

I pushed DS7 a bit back when he was 2yo to get him out of diapers before baby #2 came along, and it was a disaster. I tried hard not to make too much of potty training, but two perfectionistic, overly analytical minds--one of which was in its 2s!--did not make for a happy situation. I ended up sending him to grandma's house and he came back trained. Thank goodness! I don't know what we'd have done! I think he was simply never going to be able to do it for me. But he was ready, and grandma's house was neutral ground, so he was able to do it, right around his 3rd birthday. (Remember that...)

Learning from my mistakes, I backed way, WAY off for DS4...and he trained himself just before his 3rd birthday. Yup, same basic time!

More importantly, it was effortless. No trip to grandma's house was required. Now, DS4 is a very different kind of kid than DS7, so if the birth order had been reversed, I might have had the same problems with DS7 (then my second child) and the same ease with firstborn DS4. But I suspect that not worrying about it and not pushing helped.

DS4 was still in diapers after age 1 though. I can't argue with you there, Dottie!

I read a book before potty-training ds6 and it was great -- but I can't remember what it was called! Argh!

We had a fairly long-term, low-pressure approach with ds that worked well. First, we took his potty chair out into the living room. We lived in a pretty small apartment, and that was where we were most of the day, so the potty was easily accessible. And we just left it sitting out for a while before we even mentioned it, so he could get used to the idea and the potty wasn't a "strange" thing. And once he got pretty good about using it regularly, we moved it into the bathroom. He kept it in his room for a long time, in case of middle-of-the-night emergencies. I loved the traveling potty! It stayed at home, though, and we used Pull-Ups for any outing that seemed iffy.

We did the "bare below the waist" -- made it much easier to get to the potty quickly.

We also got two fabulous books about potty traing -- the classic "Once Upon a Potty" and another one called "The Potty Book for Boys." Both very matter of fact, both acknowledging successes and failures. He loved them and requested/read them long after he was potty-trained. In fact, I think "The Potty Book for Boys" was one of his first "actually reading" books!

And we found his currency. He'd never had candy until the few weeks before we introduced potty training, and he got one M&M for pee-pees and two for poop. He was hooked on those things ... but he gradually forgot to ask, and we gradually forgot to remind him, and he was weaned off the reward.

(An anecdote, one of the incidents that told us we were in trouble with him: Ds6 was about 2.5yo, and in the early potty-training stages. After a success, his father held out a few M&Ms and said, "Would you like the blue M&M or the red M&M?" "Hmmm ... hmmm ... I know!," ds said. "How 'bout more *two* M&Ms?" Little punk.)

Selling your house and potty training? Do those 2 things even go together? Wow! I'm really pulling for you now! I just planned on getting new carpet when we were done (we needed it anyway).

Gratified, Your stories cracked me up. I do think that ones who think hard about stuff can be the hardest to work with.

Here's my story of how my mother tried to train me. I was 3+ and my grandmother (who had dementia and was incontinent) lived with us. My mother explained pleasantly to me one morning that "your getting to be a big girl now and big girls use the potty." I replied instantly that "Grandma's a big girl and she doesn't use the potty." End of conversation. My mother knew she had lost. About 4 months later, I spontaneously decided on my own that it was time.

I think we just have different ideas of what is irritating. Since DS didn't complain when he was wet, I typically only changed him once in the morning and once at night (or when I smelled #2). I can't believe I just confessed that publically . You'd be amazed at how much those modern diapers can hold . I didn't mean to be that negligent, we just had more intersting things to do with our day! And he was not prone to rashes or anything.

Once he was trained, we always had to plan ahead. We travel a lot and it always seemed like he needed to go potty just when the flight attendant said, "Please return to your seats and prepare for landing." or when we were stuck in traffic or on a subway train. And when he needed to go, he needed to go right then. It was very frustrating. So from my perspective diapers were way easier than the alternative!

Your poor mother, acs!

DS4 really was pretty much trained around 2, and he just wanted a diaper because he didn't want to tear himself away from whatever he was playing with. The last straw was when I noticed he was pooping in his diaper, and I said, c'mon let's go get you cleaned up, and he said "wait, I just have to squish it in first." I told him then and there "no more diapers for you!" And that was that.

Oh, and when DS first wanted to be trained, we went to pick out some undies at the Disney store. I was showing him Bruce Lightyear etc, and he said, "no i want cinderella!" I tried to convince him to get boy underwear, but he said "mom, i would never pee on the princesses." So of course we had to get those! (daddy wasn't too happy about that...)

Ha! Ds6 was in love with his pink Dora Pull-Ups. Whatever... Great teenage blackmail pictures! :-D

My mom had 8 of us, so she wanted us out of diapers ASAP. In her generation I think it was more common to train early anyway. She would have been 92 this year. So my philosphy followed my moms. DS was potty trained the summer before he turned 2 in September. DD was much different. One day DD was running around, 'air-drying', and a fresh diaper was lying on the couch. She suddenly stopped, ran over to the couch, put the diaper between her legs and pee'd on it. She was 16 months old. I thought, 'hunh, might as well get the potty chair out'. I put it out, explained it was hers, and she was trained. Within a month she never even had an accident again. Her own 2nd daughter had some real potty issues though. The best advice I could give her was, "How many kindergartners go to school in diapers? Just back off on that one and she'll start using the potty eventually." And she did, and is in K, completely potty trained.

Different cultures have very different ideas though. I had a co-worker from India. She's older than I. Babies were trained by a few months old there. It might be more accurate to say the moms were trained to signals the baby gave, but the babies used a potty.

Yeah, I am sure that it true. For parents who are carrying their babies around all day (and especially in houses with dirt floors or where mothers are working in the fields with babies in tow) it would be quite easy to pick up on your child's signals and get them in the right position.

I, on the other hand, was always on the go and too out of touch to get any of his signals. I just let the diaper do the parenting work for me. Still DS has really turned out to be a pretty good kid despite my negligence.