confused

[moggs]

Hiya,

I really don't know what to do with my daughter. She's happy to sit on the potty until she needs to go. She then gets up, and gets upset, paces around the house and then i'm lucky if I can catch her pee pee. When she actually does something in the potty we give her loads of praise (she's only been doing this for the past 2 days) and she gets a chocie frog. Because of the distress she experiences, i would say she might not be ready but when she goes, she gets quite proud of herself so i'm torn whether to keep going or not. I've done the whole - loose the nappies, with the undies and clothes but she's happy to walk around in wet clothes.

She is 2.4 years and we have been gradually getting used to the potty for months now. She is aware what she needs to do, i just don't know why she gets so agitated. Has this happened to anyone else?

Moggs xx

[Chickadee]

We're not up to toilet training yet, so I'm not sure this will help. But I was wondering if your dd is sitting on the potty a lot is it possible she's thinking of it as a chair and so doesn't want to dirty it. Making the transition in her head from chair to potty would take some time, though it sounds like she's starting to. My dd (20 months) loves sitting on her potty and treats it as a chair so I wonder if we'll have a similar issue.

[xkwzit]

Hi Moggs
We never really pushed DD1 wrt toilet training and she was pretty good with number ones. For twos she would hang on until her night nappy and do it there. We would reward her for going on the loo, we would ring Grandma (or whoever) to tell them the great news, we told her that we didn't enjoy changing dirty nappies, we made her help while we changed her baby sister's pooey nappies - to no avail. She was not scared of the toilet, or of the noise, or possessive of her poo, she just didn't want to do it.

She recently decided (she is 3.5) that she would like to go to sleep in knickers and now of course has to do twos on the loo. We just had to wait until she decided that she would do it. With some kiddies, its a power game, as I expect it was with ours - she knows we can't MAKE her go where we want her to. I think you just have to be patient - you know that they won't be in nappies forever (it just seems like it).

And now I just have to brag ... Actually last night was the first night she's slept in knickers all night - yay!! :D . We were putting a nappy on her last thing at night, but she's been waking to go in the middle of the night for almost a week now with no accidents. In fact one night she got up by herself, went to the loo, got back to bed and only then cried for us to get up because she couldn't put her nappy back on. So the next night (needless to say) she went the whole night in knickers (we're so proud, we're going to have a "Good bye nappies" party). I think waiting for her to be ready had many advantages, because we started later, she could hold on longer - nothing was really urgent. And now with a night light in the bedroom and bathroom, she can get up herself, wipe herself, flush the loo, wash her hands and get back in bed without me having to get up at all :) .

Best wishes