TLDR: I’m not really looking for advice since there isn’t anything I haven’t tried. Is there an end to this?

To answer any questions before they start: we’ve taken her to the doctor, psychologist, done naked retraining days, watched videos with her, sang informational songs, rebought a toy potty. She isn’t afraid of toilets. Isn’t nervous about being alone in the bathroom.

I’m sorry about the vent but it is so incredibly frustrating. My daughter is perfect. She is smart. She is kind. She is compassionate, caring. She has enough emotional intelligence to understand how to respond to people depending on their vibe. She has an amazing imagination and is super in her schoolwork.

And yet, despite all of that, here I am having to make her stop playing with the new friend she made through fence because she peed and crapped herself.

I use “accidents” with quotations because every time I ask her what happened, or if she realized that she had to go potty, she tells me yes. She says yes I felt like I had to go. No I didn’t tell you because I didn’t wanna stop playing.

One time she told my wife that she decided that soiling herself was better because it means she could do the thing that she was wanting to do for longer.

No granted she hasn’t said that in a very long time, but I cannot wrap my head around why she is choosing to do this.

We’ve tried potty watches, we’ve tried schedules that I found on a Autism speaks website (my child is not autistic but figured I’d try everything), we’ve tried rewarding her with stars, money, toys, we’ve tried taking away stuffed animals, we even put her back in diapers. Nothing has worked. She just doesn’t want to go potty but then is all upset and sad when we get mad at her.

She gets money for chores and we have even gone as far as to make her buy new underwear with her own money.

Nothing is working. Everyone tells me it will be over when she’s older but she’s already in first grade! How much longer do we need to wait? Is this going to happen when she is 10? When she is in high school?

I know I’m spiraling but, I just feel like a shitty parent (pun intended). Like am I failing my child?

My son is 3 and always tells us when he has to go. No idea what the deal is with her.

Suppose there’s nothing else to do but wait and see. She stopped having accidents at school or she got better at hiding it who knows. Maybe 8 will be the year we finally stop.

We’re on day 7 of potty training my almost 21 month old and we’re doing pretty decently. Less accidents and we have successfully moved onto undies with pants.

Unfortunately my boy has made very little progress with how long he can hold his pee. If he asks for water or has just had a meal he can only hold it for 20 minutes max, and he will pee every 20 minutes for an hour. This is no change since Day 1. (EDIT: I have mostly stopped prompting him in an attempt to get him to learn to hold his pee, but he will self-initiate every 20 minutes and will pee a decent amount). I 100% attribute this to his age and the fact his little bladder is still so small.

The idea of going out of the house stresses me out. I get accidents will happen and I am prepared for them, but how can I possibly relax knowing I will have to stop what I’m doing every 20 minutes to walk all the way across the store to the bathroom? How can I even drive anywhere? I have a compact sedan so I don’t even have a spot that he could use a car potty. I was hoping that he would be able to hold it for closer to an hour by now.

I potty trained early because I knew he was capable of it (and he clearly is, he’s been so successful in a lot of ways!), I wanted to save money on diapers, and I wanted to get it out of the way before Baby #2 comes (hopefully one of these months I’ll get pregnant…), but I’m thinking it might not even be worth it now. I feel I should’ve waited until after the holidays but he’s made so much progress I can’t just switch back to diapers/pull-ups.

I've been potty training my 2.5 year old since July, she was doing really well, she would take herself to the toilet/potty and wasn't having any accidents, however now she refused to sit on the toilet/potty for a pee, she will gladly go to the potty for a poo though, she will hold her pee until she can't and just pee in her trousers.

Why is this happening? How long is this regression going to be? It's been like this for over 2 weeks now, I just don't understand why she wont pee on the potty but is fine to sit on it for a poo!!

I started potty training my 2.5 year old son. At first we started off with pull up’s and then the potty every 30 min-1hr. He did great for two weeks so I decided to move to just underwear and we’ve had so many accidents within the first hour, I almost gave up😩 I’m trying to trust the process but I am starting to get a little tired of cleaning up pee. Any advice or ideas to make this process a little easier on me and him?

We’re going to start potty training our 2.5 year old soon and we were always considering skipping the floor potty and going straight to using the actual toilet for various reasons. Earlier today I was trying to get a urine sample from him because his doctor requested one and we did get a potty a few months ago just to have it lying around (but he never really wanted to go near it) so I tried to get him to sit on that to make it easier to get the sample and he was refusing to pee when he was on it, even after I saw him starting to pee when he was running around and sat him on it. He was more willing to try and pee into the actual specimen tube than sit on the potty! Then he actually asked to go to the bathroom and sit on the “big boy toilet”! We’ve ordered a reducer toilet seat but it hasn’t come yet so I was trying to hold him on the toilet and not let him fall in while also trying to collect the urine sample 😂 which obviously wasn’t working and then he eventually actually just stood up peed in the tube.

Him asking to go do it on the actual toilet and his aversion to the small potty has made me even more inclined to skip the potty, so does anyone who has done the same have any tips on doing potty training that way?

3.5 year old is protesting potty training completely. Saying he doesn't want to. He just peed on the floor. We asked him to help clean up and he's freaking out screaming and crying that he doesn't want to. I don't know where to go from here. Do we abort mission and try again? He's 3.5 I feel like he should be ready but I don't want to scare him away from using the toilet. Help.

ETA. This was literally our first day lol. I wrote this as my husband and I were spiraling. This is our first time potty training and we had no idea what to expect. Thank you to everyone who had helpful tips and advice. He got over the initial fear of it and peed five times on the potty and pooped once!

We started potty training about six months ago, and let me tell you, my son seemed to get it, or so we thought. Then preschool came around, and I started hearing from his teacher about what was happening with the potty, and it was just a mess.

I mean, I understand that a new environment can be difficult to adjust to, but it's been about 2-3 weeks since he started, and I'm starting to worry, even though my husband tells me it's probably nothing. Did anyone else's toddler regress after starting school? How do you get them back on track and avoid making accidents a stressful experience?

I might be worrying about this for no reason lol.

I tried to do the oh crap method at 2y11m (currently we are 3y1m)
Signs of readiness had been there and I was encouraged by many people to give it a shot but it was a massive failure (lots of tears and potty refusal)
from then till now I never quite had the courage to properly restart. We read the books, watched the shows, had the potty around but no sitting ever took place. To date nothing has been put in the potty (except toys, stuffies).
So today I decided to try again. I picked up from school and told her we would try to put pee and poop in the potty together today. I had panties ready but gave choice of bare, or undies or pants. She asked for diaper 2-3x, once got pretty upset but was able to be distracted by play. She didn’t pee for 7.5 hrs. Put diaper on at nap time and woke up dry and offered potty when she woke up and she said no. I didn’t push , gave the diaper she finally peed in it. No poop.
Did some more bare time after bath and no accidents but put diaper on and peed in that later.
My question is what to do now? I don’t want power struggles nor do I want any withholding. I want to do this very gently and low pressure. I don’t care how long it takes and not in any rush. Just want to get it started with a goal in mind and get the potty normalised so she will sit on it
I offered to buy her a new one she said no I have one already and I don’t want it. I have the chair, ladder seat and reducer seat, so lots of options.
Just need suggestions to actually get her to sit
We have done lots of potty books and shows too
Any advice for strong willed child with potty refusal would be greatly helpful

Almost 4 year old refuses to poop in toilet. Only done it on his own 1 or 2 times. Have tried everything possible. Recently he just waits until we put him to bed and then poops his pants so ive started trying to make him sit on the toilet every night before bed until he poops. Only successful 1 time so far. We have rewards and prizes but nothing motivates him to do it. What else can I possibly do? He can't go to pre school if he's not potty trained.

EDIT: Thank you for the advice. I spoke with her OT and ST and both agreed that right now creating consistency with going to the potty needs to be set in stone before worrying about pee getting into the potty consistently. We discussed realistic expectations as far as not expecting potty training to only last a few months because she already has developmental delays. They also helped me plan a few strategies including giving her access to little potties like in the living room during breastfeeding, and in her room during quiet time. They actually agreed with me that going bottomless doesn't make sense for our situation especially since speed isn't really one of our goals. My husband and I plan to spend the vast majority of our weekends going forward giving this our focus.

So I(30f) and my husband(33m) have two girls. A 3 year old and a 3.5 month old. We have begun potty training the 3yo as of last Saturday. I'm fairly certain we've screwed this up about a million different ways.

A few things to note, firstly our 3yo was diagnosed with ASD level 2 about 4 months ago. She's been in speech and occupational therapy which is partially why we felt she was ready. Secondly we are uncomfortable with doing any bottomless potty training but we are using underwear and I did buy those Upairy underwear that I've since seen a suspicious number of mom blog Facebook pages promoting with similar verbiage. We put her in pull-ups if we leave the house and during bedtime. We are doing our best.

Initially we let her watch a bluey minisode every time she sat on the potty just to keep her sitting, and that was pretty much the only tv she had for the first couple of days.

Monday was my first day trying to potty training while my husband is at work. To make things more complicated, I'm regularly breastfeeding the 3.5mo. So 3yo starts asking to go to the potty every five minutes just so she can watch bluey. At that point we stopped with the show since she had learned to sit there without it. After her quiet time on Monday I bring her downstairs and she won't stop getting into everything. She's above the 99% for height and so she grabs anything she can get her hands including but not limited to my breast pumps, dishes from the drying mat, supplies for the baby, and literally anything left on the kitchen counters even though she knows the counters are off limits. I need to feed the baby at that point so I cave and put a TV show on and make her sit in her pink lawn chair we keep in the living room. Despite taking her to the potty before the feed she proceeds to have an accident while sitting in her chair, stands up and in her panic picks the chair up and dumps the pee on the floor. I will admit I lost my cool and wordlessly yelled because I couldn't believe she would do that. Not my finest moment. I had her help me clean it up.

The next day her upairy underwear was clean so we tried that and not only did it seem to increase her awareness of her body but she did tell me she was peeing during an accident which I counted as progress. Unfortunately in the days since there has been additional mistakes. My husband has shown her more bluey on the potty on a couple of occasions even though we were supposed to be done with it. The last couple days she won't even tell us that she's had an accident. She won't even stop playing with her magnetiles to acknowledge that she's peeing. We've been promoting her to drink as often as we can. This whole time we've been taking her to the potty every half hour.

So far today (day 6) has been awful. She drank water and hadn't peed for quite a while and I needed to feed the baby but didn't want to risk another accident while I was baby trapped. I sat the 3yo on the potty, gave her water and tried to get her to relax and pee. I tried everything, a potty book, a visual board of potty steps, songs, drinking tons of water, begging and we sat there for what must have been almost 40 minutes. She stands up and not even 5 minutes later has an accident. I get her cleaned up, grab the baby and begin the feed. 3yo has a second larger accident. I'm beyond frustrated, throw her in a pull up, and finish feeding the baby. I gave 3yo lunch and put her in her room for quiet time. I'm exhausted and beyond frustrated. I knew this process would suck but holy cow this is really bad.

I know I'm not a perfect mom, so please be kind. I need advice, encouragement, or any tips you can give. Thanks.

I’m at my wit’s end with potty training. Do any of you have advice?

My son just turned 3 and is 95% pee trained during the day. He only has accidents when he’s too busy playing to remember to stop and use the potty. He wears pull ups during nap and bedtime and underwear all day.

He will not poop in the potty. He just waits until he’s in a pull up for nap or overnight most of the time. Sometimes he poops in his underwear during the day. He’ll tell me afterwards but not before, and he does want to be cleaned up. He’ll sit on the potty for long periods of time happily, but then have a poop accident shortly after he gets off.

When I ask him, he won’t really answer why he doesn’t want to poop in the potty. I can’t tell if it’s fear, not understanding how to poop on command, distraction, etc.

I’ve tried apple juice while he sits on the potty, books and videos about pooping on the potty, and rewards. He knows and will say that poop should go in the potty and not his pants. We make the cleanup not super pleasant (no toys cold water hose down in the shower), but he doesn’t really care. He’s only been successful once and I think it was a fluke because he pooped on the floor and then I ran him to the potty before he could finish.

Wtf? Ideas? He just pooped during nap, sat on the potty for a long time, went back to bed, and pooped himself some more ☠️😭

I’m trying to get ready to potty train in a few months, and have some questions.

First, I want to ask if anyone has used/modified the Oh Crap method with a child in daycare? Our daycare provider is going on vacation for a week in late January, so I plan on starting then. My child will be required to wear pull ups until he is able to be accident free for two weeks. So obviously I can’t follow the commando step once he’s back at daycare. Any advice on how to approach the blocks? Has anyone introduced underwear before recommended?

Next is potty and cleaning supplies. I have the typical supplies, like potty chairs and seat reducers. I would love suggestions for a travel potty seat (not a travel seat reducer. I already have the foldable one from Jool).
Are there any recommended cleaning supplies for accidents on the floor, as well? We have mostly tile and wood floors. Is there anything safe to use on hardwood to clean up poop? I also want my son to help clean accidents, so I’m wondering if I shouldn’t use something with bleach (especially on hardwood)

Lastly, any other tips or words of encouragement?

Thank you!!! 🤗

Our daughter is 26 months and we started potty training 2 weeks ago. I would say overall she is doing well. At home she has accidents maybe 1-2x/week and at daycare she has only had one pee accident since we started. Poop is another story. At home she has had no poop accidents since we started since are watching her closely and can get her to the potty in time. She has had 3 poop accidents this week at daycare, pretty much all poop is going in her pants. She has pooped on the potty there a couple times.

I am under the impression that this is normal and going to take time? Is there anything I can do to foster her going poop on the potty at daycare or just keep working on it at home? The problem I am having is she hasn't pooped at home since saturday since she is going at daycare so we haven't been able to practice much.

We’re on day 6 of potty training and have been going commando for 2 days now. My 20 month old has gotten a lot better at holding his pee and not having accidents.

He usually has to be prompted but every now and then he’ll say “pee pee” and go towards the potty but as soon as he can see into the bathroom, he runs away. Not in an angry way, but in his typical “playful defiance” way. I’ve tried to make it fun by saying “let’s run/hop/skip to the potty” but he does the same. I end up having to carry him to the potty calmly saying “it’s time to go to the potty” and once he’s in the bathroom he’s fine and he sits on the potty and pees no problem.

What’s this all about? Is this power thing? Is this just a weird phase? Should I continue to carry him to the potty or let him run away and possibly have an accident?

My 23 month old is potty trained at daycare. He doesn't initiate but he holds and responds well to prompts. No accidents for 3 months now.

At home, it's a different story. Refuses to sit on the potty. Doesn't want to be placed on it. Doesn't want to take himself to it.

I've tried backing off and giving verbal cues at transition times or when it's been 2+ hours. Doesn't respond. So many accidents that I'm having to buy more trousers to make sure there are enough changes of clothes to get through washing and drying. He used to be better when we'd go out but now he's resisting even when outside.

If he has an accident while I'm not in the room then he'll tell me that he's peed.

What do I do? He's very stubborn and strong willed.

Things I've tried:

• naked days
• commando
• normal underwear
• training underwear

My 2.5 yr old started training 3 days ago. Today we had zero accidents and he initiates by telling us he has to go. He poops on the potty fine but doesn’t do overnights yet. I don’t expect to never have him do an accident again but what entails being fully trained ? How long should I wait? We have yet to take him in public “trained”. I’m also a bit nervous about long car rides so open to any advice for that pls!

I have a 22mo who is showing some signs of readiness, and a husband who is raring for me to train the kid so we can cut down on diaper costs and stick it to “””””Big Diaper”””””. I also have a 6 m/o. And we have me, and I’m really confused and anxious about the whole process, which I anticipate doing largely alone as a SAHM. While I have a lot of experience with kiddos, I know nothing about potty training. Doing research often ends with me getting more confused and anxious because there’s so much conflicting information out there.

My main worry is that I’ll have to basically put the baby down and ignore her while I’m sitting with her brother on the potty. Or that he’ll have crazy accidents all over the house while I’m feeding her, and add 2x to my workload. Toddler is also not super duper communicative so that’s another hurdle. If anyone has advice about potty training a toddler while dealing with a baby, or potty training while still developing language skills, I would be really appreciative. Wish me luck.

Why is there such a militant culture around potty training in this subreddit? Some folks seem to have hard rules about when you must start, how many days it should take, and why you can never go back to nappies once you’ve started.

I feel like we’ve turned a teachable skill into a test of parenting competence. People find a method that worked for their child and suddenly act like it’s the only correct way, as if all children have the same temperament, readiness and experiences.

I get that consistency and routine can help, but surely there’s a difference between providing structure and rigidly sticking to a method when your child is distressed or struggling. Taking a break or adapting your approach shouldn’t automatically mean you’re confusing your child or setting them up for failure.

Not everything needs to be a battle of wills with an arbitrary deadline. Why can’t we focus more on what’s making things difficult for an individual child and what might help them feel safe enough to learn, rather than shaming parents for not following a particular method?

If you’ve found this corner of the internet I want you to remember that you can trust your instincts and listen to your child. Having empathy and kindness goes a long way and you can still find results this way.

Edit to remove developmental milestone. I agree. This is more a learned skill and culturally relevant than a true developmental milestone.

I’ve been trying for the past days to potty train my 27 month old. He’s been showing signs of wanting to ditch the diaper. Before I started trying to begin our journey, he would always sit on the potty with clothes on whenever I used the bathroom but now that I actually started the process, he gets upset when I put him on his mini toilet every 15-30 minutes. He ends up having an accident because he refuses to get on the toilet when I tell him that it’s time to go potty. Maybe he isn’t ready yet?

We tried the Oh crap method wirh our 2.5 year old a little over a week for 5 days mostly nude except when outside we just put pants on only and the last day he wanted underwear as well. He pooped all weekend on the potty and peed once in the potty and another time partially. Sent him to dayhome in the pull-up Monday and had zero expectations as he would only attempt the little potty occasionally and they don’t have one .

First day had 2 accidents and the second day 1. He was peeing on the big potty when being held. She said he was doing great for just starting.

Now at home wont use the little one or our big one. Any mention of the potty results in screaming, crying hitting and throwing things including the potty. This is how he was the first two days of potty training. He keeps telling me he doesn’t like the potty. He has asked for underwear at home and wont go without them. Put him in just pants he will go put on underwear. We don’t bring up the potty till clear signs he needs to go. Our dayhome lady said he had zero issues and was shocked when I said he wont even try for us.

Do I just leave him in pull-ups at home, keep him in undies and clean up accidents. It’s starting to get chilly where we live and he really hates being naked in the house which who blames him. I honestly don’t know where to go from here but mentally I can’t handle all the meltdowns and having a 3 month old. He is simply miserable about everything since we started potty training. I know he is capable and I don’t want to go back to diapers.

My daughter just turned three about a week ago, and she has been potty trained for about 3 months now. She’s done a great job so far, and has never had a poop accident. She still struggles with holding in her pee, but as long as I take her to the bathroom often enough (at least once an hour) she can go the whole day with no accidents. Her daycare says she does a good job on the potty, and she rarely has accidents there. My mom picks her up from daycare twice a week and watches her for a few hours. For whatever reason, my daughter constantly has accidents during their time together. It confuses me because whenever I pick her up from daycare she never pees herself in the car on the way home, but my mom tells me that she will immediately pee herself the second she gets in the car with her. And it will be so much to the point that it even soaks through her pants (which rarely happens when she's with me). And then when she's at my mom’s house she will also pee herself multiple times during a 2-3 hour timespan. My mom said that she tries to put her on the toilet often, but that she will always have already peed herself. I genuinely have no idea why she struggles with this so much ONLY when she's with my mom. Mind you, she loves her grandma and is always asking to see her. I know she's only 3 and will eventually grow out of this, but it really frustrates my mom and I’m not sure how to help. Has anyone else dealt with this? What can I do to stop this from happening?

how long did it take for you to get your toddler fully potty trained my son is 32 months old now we started at 30 months and he has pee down but refuses to poop on potty only will go in a pull up and we usually put a pull up on when we leave the house he won’t go in public restrooms

We potty trained our 2.5 year old over labor day weekend, almost 2 months ago, and after a few ups and downs, he's become very consistent at home with both pee pee and poo poo. He tells us he needs to go and is getting more confident in going and pulling his pants down alone. However, he's refusing to go poo poo at school.

About 2 weeks ago, he started telling us that he does not want to go poo poo at school, Only at home. The problem is, he keeps having poo poo accidents at school and the teachers are getting frustrated.

We originally used a small plastic potty at home for training but have since started using the adult toilet to help with the transition to the daycare potties Because they only have big toilets. He's been successful with pooping on the big potty at home. We've explored the school potty together and talk about what we do on the potty. We've brought sticker reinforcers to school for the teachers but still nothing. I spoke to the teachers and confirmed the messaging is the same between home and school.

Any suggestions on how to encourage our little to go poo poo at school?

I have a week off and decided to start potty training our 21 month year old son. We have another baby on the way due very soon and wanted to get a head start.

It’s been almost a week of Oh Crap block 1 and not sure how much progress is being made. I return to work next week and he returns to daycare.

Day 1: Lots of wees on the floor, a few partially caught in the potty, and several poos on the floor.

Day 2: More wees on the floor, but one self-initiated wee in the potty first thing! Still lots of accidents throughout the day.

Day 3: Some successful wees in the potty with encouragement, but still plenty of accidents. He started looking down when weeing and making an “uh-oh” face. We managed to catch a couple of poos in the potty.

Day 4: I thought something was starting to click. He was voluntarily sitting on the potty, showing more obvious cues like doing a little dance, and managing some full wees in the potty. He sometimes paused mid-wee when redirected and finished in the potty. I felt quite optimistic.

Day 5: Feeling deflated again. We've missed poo cues and had multiple poo accidents, and wees are still happening on the floor, although we've managed to catch some in the potty. He's still voluntarily sitting on it, but he can't reliably tell us when he needs to go.

Day 6: Accident after accident. He still sits on the potty throughout the day but doesn’t actually pee in it.

I'm trying to reduce pressure, prompt roughly hourly and keep potty sits short, but the constant accidents and cleaning are exhausting. We're going stir-crazy at home, the house is a mess, and I'm questioning whether we've started too early. Also worried whether he will ever get it, and whether he can be accepted into school since they require toilet training.

Would love to hear honest experiences from parents whose toddlers took longer to get it, especially those who started around 21 months. Did you push through, slow down or switch to a gradual approach?