Strollerderby

Seriously, potty training is way over hyped.  It's not that big of a deal.  My (unsolicited) advice:  don't think of it as something YOU have to do; think of it as something HE has to do.  The best teacher is a pair of wet/soiled pants and the consequence that you have to stop playing with trucks long enough to get them off, get cleaned up, change clothes, etc.  A kid will wise up to how much easier life is in dry clothes in his own time, usually not longer than a couple of weeks.  Seriously.  We did the M&M thing with our son at 25 months.  He figured it out in one day.  Our daughter got wise at 18 months (no M&Ms needed) and it took her probably 3 weeks to be almost 100% dry during the day.  Prepare to wash some extra laundry for a few weeks, then get on with your happy, diaper free life.  Oh, and I'm serious about this: don't go back to diapers.  The new reality involves using the potty.  Kids adapt so much better than we thing they will.

I second what Sheila wrote.  It's no big.  

I trained my son at 2.5, and yes bribes worked big time at that age. You got to get stickers.  And my nanny made a potty progress chart, where she would affix the stickers when he made a poop in the potty. But if you can't deal with a chart (I couldn't), just give him a sticker and let him put it where ever.

One thing that worked well for me was getting the kids used to using all sorts of toilets and also peeing on the ground.  That way you dont' have to tote around a potty chair or ring.

Stickers are good, not getting worked up is good too (although difficult). Biggest two successes for us: ditching the diapers so that our son knew what it was like to be wet/icky, and peer pressure when he moved to a class of bigger kids at daycare, most of whom were potty trained.

I took a few steps:

-i talked with my son about using the potty for about a week before we started

-He got to pick out his own big boy pants at target (thank god for Tow Mater britches)

-I said no more diapers...you pee in your pants you wear them...you poop...yucky you wear them.

-the pee thing came easy becasue my boy-friend taught him to pee standing up

The poop thing...I did candy reward..jelly beans and m & m s are perfect.

I think it was no big deal for me because I had the help of someone who was not me or his dad.

I'm still working with Quinn who is 3.  He'll tell us he has to go, after he's went.  We've tried the whole gambut of ideas: bribing, new underwear, videos and books.  I'm just gonna have to wait this one out, he doesn't get it and isn't ready.  Nate was late at the poop thing too, but once he got it.  He was done.  There was no going back.  Maybe one day, I'll have a child who will be potty trained before three.  

If you are going to bribe em, stickers are the way to go, cheap and you can get ones your child likes.

Do Not Panic.  For us, it was HUGELY helpful (and very difficult for me!) to let go a little bit and give the kids ownership of the process.  

We made a BIG fuss when they did use the potty/toilet (I made up a stupid song or two, and they loved it) and just asked that they "help" with the cleanup when they didn't quite make it in time.  We tried hard not to make them feel ashamed of accidents, thinking that it might be counterproductive.  We also used M&M's as bribes, but only for poop and only in the actual toilet.  And then we ran out of M&Ms and chose not to buy any more.

My son was OK about peeing in the toilet for quite some time before he would poop in the toilet.  We did a lot of reassuring with him: Poop is normal, everyone poops, poop is the stuff that your body doesn't need, poop belongs in the toilet.  (We reinforced that last by always, always emptying the poop into the toilet, whether from diapers or pull-ups or underwear.)

And, oh yeah: get them around kids who are potty-trained.  Peer pressure was pretty effective for us. :)

Despite movies, books, and peers who used the potty, neither of my kids wanted to potty train.  At 3, I finally bribed my daughter with candy.  In about two weeks she was trained, day and night.

My son was a hard case.  He refused to use the potty despite offers of stickers, candy, trains, outings, etc.  After weeks of changing wet pants 6-8 times a day, we put him in pull-ups.  But then he decided, on the first day of preschool, at age 3 1/2, that he wanted to wear underpants.

We've never gone back to pull-ups, but there have been lots of wet and even poopy pants over the last year.  I'm convinced that I'll be sending him to kindergarten (and maybe college) with extra pants in his backpack - because he just doesn't care.  

Good luck!

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