My best friend is potty training twins, 3 and half year old boy and girl twins. It is not going well. I have very little advice for her other than, potty training sucks, and the reason I'm not having another child is so I never have to potty train again.
I'm only partially kidding.
She asked me to post this, and please leave any advice you have in the comments. Thank you!
The Boy Child:
Has anyone had a 3.5 year old boy who is pee trained but not poop trained?
He will poop in the potty most of the time at home, but if he is at a playground or out of the house he just goes in his pants and does not care. Bribery does not seem to work. Any suggestions?
Also, he only seems to have a 10 second warning system on his poops. So even if he does tell us we often miss the potty. Does the warning system lengthen over time? How long will this take?
The Girl Child:
She has had constipation issues, but now with the right medicine we seem to be doing ok in that regard. However, she now seems to just poop in her pants and then lies about it. When you ask her about it (i.e. you smell it) she throws a fit. Any advice? Also, bribery does not seem to work.
Also, although she can pee on the potty she only does it when she feels like it. So sometimes she has three “accidents” a day. In fact, recently she had a “accident” while going out for reward ice cream with Michael. Thoughts?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
My 3yo only recently finally started pooping in the potty. It took 6 months of multiple poopy underwear every day before he got it, so I really get that frustration! Every time I’d get him starting to poop in the potty, his dad’s weekend would roll around. He put him in pull-ups every. single. time! (Oh and my kids never could get it that it wasn’t okay to go in pull-ups)
The ONLY thing that worked for me was money. Get a small jelly jar, cut a hole in the lid, and throw in a handful of change. If they pee in the potty, give them 5 coins to put in (doesn’t matter what kind since they don’t really get the value of money yet). If they poop in the potty, give them 10 coins to put in. Make a huge deal out of every coin going in.
If they have a pee accident, take 5 coins out of the jar. A poop accident gets 10 coins taken out. Again, make a big deal out of. Be sorrowful.
The point is, when the jar reaches a certain level of coins, they have enough money to go buy a super special toy. I never bothered with actually counting it, since they don’t really get that. I would sort of pretend, then give my kid a $10 or $20 bill and go to the store, let them pick whatever they wanted that was within their budget. They got to actually buy it by giving the cashier the money and everything.
Filling the jar should last a week, maybe two. If they have an accident after they’ve bought their toy, you take the toy away until they’ve used the potty the next day.
I know this is bribery, of a sort, but it’s working toward a goal and that might help. If you can avoid taking them to the park and such, now is the time. Probably your little girl throws a fit because she’s embarrassed and doesn’t know how to express it.
GOOD LUCK! I know how bad this sucks and I feel for you!
I have an almost 4 year old who has the occasional poop accident (down to about once a week). Bribery didn’t work, neither did encouragement, movies, songs, charts, candy, stickers, threats or crying (by me).
We had a breakthrough when we bought and read “Everybody Poops.” I have no idea why. He suddenly made the connection that the poop goes in the potty. Then he discovered Star Wars underwear and realized that pooping in the Star Wars underwear wasn’t ideal. We’re down to about 1 accident a week.
For the first son, (after a poor first attempt and 3 month delay) we watched “Once Upon a Potty,” and he was instantly potty trained. Never had an accident. Really. (There are not two brothers more different than mine.)
I have learned that even though you’re ready (more than ready!) for the next stage of something – sometimes they aren’t. And when it comes to potty training, nothing is going to make them use that *&^% potty until they are ready. For us, nothing bad happened when I said, this is stressing everyone out -we’re going to take a break and start over fresh in a couple months. Maybe the little girl needs a break. Take the stress and emotion out of the whole thing for a couple months and try again when you’re both ready for another round.She might be more interested in using the potty if she feels less pressure. She might be afraid of the potty or pooping, or a million other things that only make sense when you’re 3.
For the little boy, sounds like you’re getting there! If he’s having accidents mostly when he’s out, make sure to remind him to try to go before you leave the house and show him that potties exist in the wild. My little one is fascinated by the existence of bathrooms in stores, restaurants and even portable potties at events! Turns out he didn’t know there were bathrooms outside the house or school.
And take a deep breath -it gets better. Our pediatrician once told me, “I’ve never sent a kid to college who wasn’t potty trained.”
Hang in there!
My twins are ready for potty training yet, but I do dread it! For our son, we did stickers (shiny little bug stickers and other neat ones) on a regular calendar. One for each pee and two for a poop, or maybe it was a big sticker for poop and little ones for pee, I can’t remember now). Seeing the calendar at the end of the day and really looking at how many stickers he had (usually at bedtime we did this) may have helped. But I also just think he was ready. For about the year before that we’d made attempts, but he just wasn’t really ready to commit. My godson was 5 when he fully potty trained. It will happen, just not necessarily on our time table.
Now remind me of this when I’m PT my twins! I’ll need it!
They just night not be ready. All kids develop differently and it is no way a reflection on their intelligence or future.
I don’t have kids, and don’t see having them at this point, so I have nothing constructive to add. I just want to say that “the reason I’m not having another child is so I never have to potty train again” is one of the funniest things I have read in a very long time.
Have “trained” 3 boys. My pedi gave me sound advice- show them the potty, let them know what goes in there, be patient. Boys just take longer to poop in it-if you get into a power struggle you will lose. Good luck.
I potty trained both my boys when they were each just over 2 years old and I did it in a weekend. It was simple — they stayed naked the whole time (except for sleep, when we used pull-ups, not diapers). They had about two accidents each, and that was all.
That worked perfectly for me, but still, every child is different. Both my boys were ready, so that made it much easier. Still it doesn’t hurt to try if your schedule allows you to stay homebound for a few days.
I have b/g twins, and my recommendation is to train them separately — back-to-back rather than at the same time. Go with the one who seems further along.
Perhaps as a wedding gift.
I sat down with both twins and showed them a blank book I got at AC Moore that had stickers with their favourite things on the front. They could never use these books, though they wanted them very badly. They were potty training books. So each day, I wrote the date at the top. If the girl sat on the potty and nothing happened, she got a butterfly sticker (it was sort of plain). If she peed, she got a flower (they were slightly prettier). If she pooped, she got a popsicle sticker (it freakin’ rocked). She could never have these stickers for anything else — they only went in the book. As she sat on the potty, we’d look back on other days and talk about it. How she had a great day — look at all these flowers! Or how she had a day where she sat a lot and nothing came out. I also wrote down accidents. So she was constantly thinking about how she did. I have to admit that the potty training book was so hypnotically enticing that they would go to the bathroom just to see the cover with the three-dimensional stickers I decorated it with.
After a few weeks, we were trained and I put away the books. They came out again one other time as a behaviour book and again, it has gone away again. They sometimes still ask to just see the covers of the books, but I still won’t give them to them
My son would pee in the potty, but go hide somewhere to poop in his diaper. I have no idea why, but that’s what he did. We just waited it out and he finally started going in the potty.
We loved watching Bear in the Big Blue House’s Potty Time with Bear video. You might give that a try.