The dreaded potty training

We have been trying to potty train my two year old since before she was 2. It's been an off and on again effort on our part. But I decided today is the day!

A few things we're going to try are:

*Pink underwear. She LOVES pink. I let her pick out which pair she has on. We have tried Pull-ups but she just uses them like a diaper. They didn't do any good at all.
*A new potty chart. She had an old one and I think it got less exciting for her because it had a lot of star stickers on it. We started over with a new one today. A pink one, of course.
*I'm setting the timer for every 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, she WILL sit on the potty whether she has to go or not.
*Lots of praise, no getting angry. We generally do this anyway, but an extra effort on the praising might make a difference.
*I'm making sure she is always wearing pants so she can feel the wetness. And this is also to protect my carpets. We do have Woolite pet urine eliminator just in case.
*Watching a potty video. We used to have Potty Power but she took the DVD and drug it across our tile floor. Now the DVD player won't play the DVD. Luckily we have a free potty training DVD we got from Pull ups.

In other news at our house on a diapers related note, we are switching our 11 month old to cloth diapers. We used to cloth diaper our two year old until she got horrible rashes we couldn't get rid of for months. We are hoping to have better luck with the 11 month old.

Any tips that have worked at your house for potty training? I'm starting to wonder if it's at all possible for my kid to potty train.

2 comments:

Linda said...

I wrote a post about how diaper service taught me to 'clean' cloth diapers. I still use it on my whites most of the time. http://timeinablogttle.blogspot.com/2010/11/clean.html

Our favorite book was http://www.amazon.com/Toilet-Training-Less-Than-Day/dp/0671693808 - seriously - it was a method developed for mentally handicapped adults - and some 'normal' children really can succeed. For those that don't the method provides some great ways to cope and 'train' past the frustrations and accidents. We had one child that trained herself at 14 months - as soon as she could walk(took off her own diaper, sat on the toilet and refused to ever allow it to be put on her again). Had another child that was still having accidents near school age. The others were somewhere in between the two extremes. Good luck!

Jenn said...

I have heard about that! Someone was telling me what a great method it was and how well it worked for her twin girls (I can't imagine potty training two at once). I need to check that out. Also, I'm hoping my next one potty trains at 14 months. A parent can always dream, right?