Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Potty training... talk to me people

Oh definitely! This would have never have worked with my son for that matter. She was very excited about preschool and had been talking about it all summer. You really have to find what will motivate your child. For my son, it was attending a big boy birthday party. For another kid, it might be a big kid game or whatever. It just helped to have some sort of motivation for my kids to be willing.

My number one concern.

DD doesn't have anxiety *in general* about using the potty, and yesterday her anxiety was not at all related to how I was feeling, because I was completely calm. But... anxiety is anxiety and whatever we are doing is not working for her. I hopeful it's just timing.

I won't use a sticker chart - thanks for the heads-up! lol

Hopefully all of us brainstorming here can come up with some new things for you to try

Maybe you just need to experiment to figure out what works for your DD.

This reminds me of when I started training DS (he's my second child) I thought to myself that since I had been successful with DD, it would be no problem to train DS. Wrong! I needed a different approach with him. He was not motivated by the same things she was. He wasn't ready at the same age. Etc.

And since it's potty-training we're discussing, I'm guessing it's also number 2!



Ah, nothing like a little bathroom humor!

(Very little...)

(Just kidding. I thought it was funny )

Yes, thank you ALL. Your input is very helpful.

DD is so incredibly bossy right now - supreme need for control. I figure some of the challenges we are facing are GT-related because her will is gigantic compared with her age peers. Let's just say she has the mechanics of when and how to use the potty down. She totally gets it.

I don't want to harm her overall sense of control and influence over her world. We don't need her to be potty trained this month. It can wait.

Kriston - you'd fit in nicely at our house with that kind of humor.

You laugh or you'll cry!

Seablue, I just went through the same exact thing with DD3. We introduced the potty early and she seemed excited, then quit. When we tried re-introducing the potty at around 2 1/2, she willfully rejected it. DD3 sounds like your DD -- very willful and bossy. We backed off with the potty because she'd throw a fit if I tried to sit her on the toilet. I figured we wouldn't get anywhere like that, so we took some time off.

We did talk about the potty, though, at other times. As she approached 3-y-old, I told her that they didn't make pull-ups any bigger and that she'd have to start wearing underwear. She understood that pull-ups meant she could pee herself and underwear meant she had to use the toilet. I also made sure we worked on pulling our pants up and down. DD gets VERY frustrated at the drop of a hat if she can't do something the first time. So we took a lot of time working on the pants so she'd be able to do it by herself when she did learn to use the potty.

One day she wanted a purple pull-up, but all we had were blue ones. So DH told her we had purple underwear. Once she wore the underwear, I could not do the normal potty-training thing of taking them to the bathroom every hour or so -- DD fought that terribly. She had to pee her pants a few times to realize that oh yeah, I need to pee in the toilet, not my underwear. After that, we've been good to go. She still wears pull-ups for naps and bed, but I'm fine with that for now.

It definitely helped when we backed way off of the potty training in the earlier stages -- I didn't even mention it for a long time -- and I tried to act like I didn't care about changing her pull-up, like it was no big deal. Sometimes when I had to use the bathroom, I'd say to DD, "Uh oh! I need to go pee! Where do I go????" She'd say, "The potty!!" So I'd sit on the floor and say, "Here???" And she'd say, "Nooo, the potty!!" We'd do that about various places so I could reinforce where we went potty. I don't know if it helped, but it made her laugh.

In the end, she was trained just before her 3rd birthday.

OP: My DD3 was the same way... she just didn't care. They always say girls are easier, but not for us. DS5 was 100% potty trained in less than a day!

We tried the same approach with DD3, but didn't have any luck, but maybe you will. We told him for about 3 days prior that "Saturday" was the big day. That morning, we stripped him of his bottoms and put the potty in the living room. We asked him every 30 minutes or so if he had to go and/or about 5-10 minutes after drinking/eating. He had one accident. But I'm thinking now that because he didn't like to be wet/dirty, and he grasped onto how to work things easily, that it made it easier for us.

For DD3, we went the pullup route. I hated it b/c I was so anti-pullup. But like Cathy stated, once you switch to underwear/panties, do not go back. Also try one thing at a time. With DD3 we worked on being at home/school with no pullup, then we worked on going places with no pullup, then night time training.

But with both kids, reminding them several days before that there was going to be a special day helped a bunch.

Oh, and when DD3 tells us she can't because she's too little or just a baby (when it's an obvious thing that she can do like walking - yes she will tell us she can't walk), we "cry" that we miss our big girl. Gets her every time. Mean, I know, but it also lets her know that while we loved it when she was a baby, we also really love the age she is now and all the things she can do.

good luck!

We attempted the sticker chart with DS5, and it so blew up in our face. He tried to outsmart us for more stickers all the time! LOL