Escape Artist?

Heidi - posted on 12/21/2009

I used to work at a daycare in the toddler room (lots of potty training experience) and usually the options are between Pull-ups and Huggies. I prefer the Pull ups, they are very easy to get up and down and kids all seem to like them too, plus they tear easily at the sides if you need to get a dirty diaper off easier. I don't think there is a real easy way to tell if a child is ready to begin potty training; I think the only way to know is to let them try a little and see how it goes. If you act all excited and ask if they want to sit on the potty and try to pee-pee and they say "no!" and run away, you may need to slow down a bit. Maybe read a couple potty books, get a doll that comes with a potty and help the doll potty, talk about how mommy and daddy pee-pee in the potty, and then try again in a couple weeks. But if your daughter wants to try sitting on the potty "just like mommy" (even if she wants to just sit on it with clothes on at first) just act excited and clap and tell her how great it is that she sat on the potty. Then after she seems comfortable trying that every once in awhile, you can show her how to pull down the pull ups "all by herself" and sit on the potty "like a big girl" and see how that goes. The best thing to do with potty training is to start small and go very very slowly, letting your child take the lead on when to try the next steps. Some kids make lots of progress, then slow down, then do well again, then regress, then make more progress, and so on, until you realize one day that they have pee-peed and even poopied in the potty all week and their pull-up is usually dry in between potty-tries. So far, our daughter (who is 20 months) has been sitting on the potty maybe a couple times a week for a month or two, just for fun and to familiarize her with how sitting on the potty works. Some days she wants to do it, some days she doesn't, and we dont force her to try if she doesn't feel like it. She has (completely accidentally) pee-peed in the potty 3 times so far (just a drop or two, mostly because it's winter and chilly in the bathroom sometimes) so when that happened we praised her and showed her the pee-pee in the potty and what a good girl she was for pee-peeing in the potty. She loved all the attention (even though I'm sure she has no idea how she did it in the first place). But so far we're ok with our "slowly but surely" potty process, and she seems ok with it too. :) Hope this rambling helps you! Let me know how it goes!