UPDATE POST #5- PLEASE HELP! Potty training questions

[dukie41181]

So we are sartingto potty train our daughter. We have been letting her play naked in the house during the day and she will not have accidents and she will occasionally pee in the potty. What I have been noticing however is that when she has a diaper (sleeping and leaving the house) she will go and especially when sleeping it seems a lot. Like she's storing it up or something! Am I doing something wrong? Today she wanted a pair f underwear when playing, I gave them t he and she peed in them. I'm sure she thought underwear=diaper. Havingsaid all this, she's doing really great with pooping on the potty. She even told us she needed to o as we were putting her to bed last night! Tips or advice welcome!

[ahrimie]

I noticed my DD would just pee in her diaper first thing in the morning when we had just finished day training. So I just took the diaper off all together. Sure, we had some accidents and still do once in awhile (at night only) but I knew she knew the sensation to go and had plenty of control too. We did this right before she turned 3 though so not sure if I would do that with yours since she is a tad younger.

I would probably start by keeping underwear on when leaving the house and do diapers only for sleeping. Good luck!

[dukie41181]

I noticed my DD would just pee in her diaper first thing in the morning when we had just finished day training. So I just took the diaper off all together. Sure, we had some accidents and still do once in awhile (at night only) but I knew she knew the sensation to go and had plenty of control too. We did this right before she turned 3 though so not sure if I would do that with yours since she is a tad younger.

I would probably start by keeping underwear on when leaving the house and do diapers only for sleeping. Good luck!

So how do people handle accidents when out and about? Bring lots and lots of extra clothes?

[ahrimie]

So how do people handle accidents when out and about? Bring lots and lots of extra clothes?

Well, you're going to have them. You just have to kind of accept it
Take LO to the bathroom often, before you leave the house and before you go back home. Keep an extra change of bottoms, underwear, socks, and shoes (if they're sneakers) in the car too. It's nice to have a small potty in the car too; we just used the one from ikea (like $4.95 or something).

I've only had to change DD like that twice and she caught on. We carried around extra bottoms and underwear for another few weeks just to be safe.

You can do it!!

[dukie41181]

I've been trying to put my daughter on the potty and we'll go lots of times but she doesn't seem to have awareness BEFORE she needs to go...maybe she doesn't feel the sensation? When she walks around without anything on, she doesn't pee but when I put her in undies she will pee in them. Almost like undies=diaper and she doesn't seem to care either. Is my daughter maybe not ready yet? She is 2.5. And if she isn't ready, should I not be having her use the potty at times? PLEASE HELP! I FEEL SO LOST!

[MSWR0319]

We had a similar problem with DS at that age, except he just peed in his underwear, no holding in! I decided to hold off a month or so and put him back in diapers. About a month later we tried again and it worked. It took about a week for him to tell me he had to go, but as long as I took him every few hours he had no accidents.

[american_mama]

What she's doing is very typical. Maybe kids know that being naked = pee will run down their leg, which they don't like. Underwear or clothes is a bit more absorbent and lessens that sensation. Or maybe it's the physical sensastion of something next to their skin that does remind them of diapers, who knows.

At the beginning, many children don't have an awareness before they go. You need to take her to the potty frequently enough that she won't have much in her bladder to create an accident, but not so frequently that she starts to hate the inconvenience of using the potty, or has so little in her bladder that she truly doesn't need to go. I'd say choose somewhere between every 20-45 minutes at the start. Definitely take her before naptime and bedtime and before leaving the house for an outing.

Hopefully, after 1-3 weeks, you'll see some improvement in her ability to notice that she has to go in advance and in her ability to hold it (longer intervals between using the potty). Just a warning, a common interim step is that she either says she has to go but pees before she gets there, or notices right after that she's wet her pants and knows that's not right. Keep plugging at it and hopefully she'll start recognizing the sensation a little sooner.

If you don't notice any improvement in the next 1-3 weeks, or if she keeps wetting in underwear and doesn't even seem to care, then I'd say put her back in diapers and wait a bit, maybe a month or two. I'd still take her to the potty before bedtime and naptime and leaving the house, since even if you stop temporarily, it's a short delay before you are potty training again.

Also, how is she doing with poop? I was frustrated with my son's slow progress in potty training, so much that I constantly overlooked one significant success, which was that he quickly learned to use the potty for poop. Remembering that would have made me feel better about his progress.