Potty Training 101 - Share your best tips!

 what my husband and i did with our daughter was we took her every 20 minutes or so to the bathroom and we'd a book or my cell phone to read or listen to music..And katie would sit there on the potty for awhile and sometimes she'd end up using the bathroom..eventually she got the hang of things and it worked...Every child has their own way of getting potty trained...But it does help getting lots of advice..I know it sure helped me...thank goodness

Dont start until they are ready. Its fine to introduce the potty at a young age (we started sitting DD on the potty as a baby so she was familiar with it, didnt want her scared.) But if they aren't developmentally ready, it will just be stressful on everybody  and will probably take longer.

 

Our son did well with a 'Potty Chart'.

I miss how little he was :-(

my daughter is just over 3 yrs old. she'll  pee on the potty but won't poop,she keeps going poo in her panties. i do reward her for going pee.what other  idea can i do?  thanks.

People say wait till there ready what if there 4 thats gross i started at 2 and i get really into it and i take them to the bathroom every 30 min i hear people giving snacks or movies i didnt do that and there all trained be persistent

 is my son too early to be potty trained? he is almost 15 months? he's always wondering into the bathroom and staring at the toilet and peeks at his father go pee. im kinda worried cuz my house is all carpeted, exept the bathroom and kicthen of coarse.

ok ladies, soo confused. How can I not use pull ups?  My 3 yr old twin boys are in daycare all day.  We have to use pull ups.  What about when we have activities during the evening and weekends.  What are readiness signs? At this rate, we will not be potty trained b/f 4.  HELP!

Okay I understand the no pull ups thing! I used them with my first son and I think it just prolonged it and now with the 2nd son we have used them again because we moved from Alaska to Oregon and I didn't want to deal with accidents in the drive down..well now he refuses to wear underwear, if I do get him to wear them he just pees or poos right away and changes immediately but will NOT sit on the potty to save his life! If he runs around naked he just poops or pees wherever he is standing. I'm not sure he understands the urge to go yet! He will be 3 in febuary! Help!

My 28 month old daughter used to be into potty training i had her going for a while. Now she is not interested in it and fights with me to use the potty Is this normal?

All of your tips are wonderful. The thing to keep in mind is that every child is different, with that in mind, some might be potty trained in a week and some in 3 months!  I have 3 children and each of them reacted differently.  What really helped with the first two (now 11 and 8) was that they attended very good Montessori schools where they had a bathroom in the classroom with mini toilets--how cool is that?  They were trained "cold turkey" there.  But my last child, now 3, I could not afford an expensive Montessori program at 18 months so I waited to put her in school until she was 2.5, I waited to switch her to a bed until she was 2+ and I waited to potty train her until she was 2.5.  But guess what?  She was potty trained in 1 week with ZERO accidents for 6 months. Right now she occasionally has an accident because she's having too much fun playing outside. But I agree with the moms that say "cold turkey" is the way to go.  I bought my 3 year old princess and Hello Kitty panties from Target, which she absolutely LOVEDDDDD and I said to her: "now, you don't want to get your beautiful panties wet and dirty, right?" and it worked like a charm.  I did use a potty and not the regular toilet because she's tiny for her age and almost fell through a couple of times and she developed a fear toward the toilet, so she goes when she needs to, and when she gets bigger and feels self confident not to fall through, she'll be using the toilet.  My son and first child, however, was potty trained in 2 weeks perfectly, then regressed for 3 months, then was trained again.  He used to just stand there and wet himself, boys have a different sensation, but like I said, ALL KIDS are different.  They'll get it!  Like a friend once told me when my second daughter wouldn't walk at 18 months: "she'll walk, when have you seen a 4-year-old crawling (unless they have an illness, of course), and when have you seen a 4 or 5 year-old not potty trained"?  Very rare.  Good luck all!