Potty Training Accident Frequency- What's normal?

[Anonymous]

Hi All!
We potty trained my 2.5 year old son using the Oh Crap method a month ago. It went ok, but he's shown little progress since the first few days. He's still having 1-3 pee accidents a day at daycare (but very few when home with us, because we make him try to pee every so often). Is this normal? He also has only pooped in the potty successfully twice. He usually waits for his night time diaper to poop. This is my first child, so I have no clue what to expect... just looking for other's experiences I suppose!

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Sounds normal to me. For us being potty trained for poop about about four months after being potty trained for pee. And we had to bribe my older for poop (I started training my younger really young to try and avoid that whole business but he’s not yet 2 and nowhere near fully trained so jury’s still out in if it worked).

[Anonymous]

Not an expert, only have one 26 month old girl. For us, she was able to tell us when she had to poop way before pee. 1-3 accidents a day sounds like a lot. Our daughter has maybe one pee accident a week and began potty training a month ago.

[Anonymous]

It does seem like a lot of accidents. Maybe the daycare keeps him too busy, and he doesn’t get the chance to go because he feels like he’s stuck doing an activity. I’d ask if they are actually prompting him to go in between activities, and not let him decide. Eventually he should feel comfortable enough to say I need to go I potty on his own.
As for my experience also as a FTM, I trained DS this summer a few months after turning 2. I didn’t use any sort of book, and just went along with what made more sense for us/him. He had about 1 or 2 accidents a day in the first week, but it gradually dropped to 1 or 2 a week in the first month. Pooping was the easier part, he’s only had about 2 or 3 total poop accidents. Maybe he thought it was a fart, but pooped instead, IDK.

Another thing is, how many layer are you putting on him? When we first started he was bottomless, then we did just pants or underwear (with a soft waist band that he can easily pull down), and after about 1 month we started with underwear and pants. That said he is not in a daycare and we have an out of home nanny as his caregiver. He would get a lot of prompting early on. We are now 2 months in and he easily goes potty on his own at home. But when we are out and about, we do go to the restroom about every hour or so just in case he needs to go. He is less likely to say he needs to potty outside, probably because he has no idea where to go.

[Anonymous]

The poop waiting sounds normal. The frequency of accidents sounds like he’s not actually potty trained yet. I’d talk to the daycare about ideas to support getting him over this hump. I had one kid who would tell me he needed to go and the other just needed to be taken at regular intervals, never told me he had to go.

[Anonymous]

For those who said that it took your child longer to learn how to poop in the toilet, how did you handle it? We vaguely followed the oh crap method with my 2.5 year old and he picked up on peeing very quickly and has few accidents. However it really isn’t clicking for poop and he doesn’t wait until his nighttime diaper but rather tends to have accidents in his pants/underwear. I am tempted to put him into pull ups since the poop accidents are getting to be too much, but don’t want to give up the progress we have made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those who said that it took your child longer to learn how to poop in the toilet, how did you handle it? We vaguely followed the oh crap method with my 2.5 year old and he picked up on peeing very quickly and has few accidents. However it really isn’t clicking for poop and he doesn’t wait until his nighttime diaper but rather tends to have accidents in his pants/underwear. I am tempted to put him into pull ups since the poop accidents are getting to be too much, but don’t want to give up the progress we have made.

We went through this. We essentially let him poop in his underwear for about 8 months. It SUCKED. We eventually had to take his underwear away.

If you think that he is actually ready/mature enough, I would go back to naked time (or at a minimum, you can do the Winnie the Pooh and give him a shirt).

If you are feeling like "maybe we started this too early" you can let him poop in his underwear for a few weeks or months and then take away the underwear and pants and try again.

Do not go back to pull-ups - he'll just pee in them.

[Anonymous]

We tried potty training a couple times and it just never stuck, then one day when my daughter was a month shy of three years old, she just took off her diaper and went to the potty completely on her own. She had a couple accidents that first week but she hasn’t worn diapers since (even at night) and accidents are extremely rare. I’m probably just extremely lucky that she effectively potty trained herself, but perhaps there’s something to be said for finding when the kiddo is developed enough and ready? (That said I was potty trained earlier because of major diaper rash issues so I know there’s all sorts of reasons to do it sooner).

[Anonymous]

Honestly he’s not ready. I have 4 kids and have never done one of these methods or boot camp or whatever. You just wait until they’re ready and done, no more diapers. None of my kids have ever had a day accident ever. When they’re ready physically it’s a non-event.

[Anonymous]

We just did oh crap for the second time. Both at 2.5 so same age. First one was at a school with no toilets in the rooms and she had to ask to go potty. She had more accidents - every other day for the first two weeks, then dropped off til we were having no accidents at one month mark. Her issue was she was not comfortable speaking up to ask to be taken to potty.

Second just did it and he took to it really well. He has always been pretty aware when peeing or pooping so he picked it up quickly. He only had one accident the first week and continues to have about 1 or 2 a week and we are about a month out. He does typically wait to poop. His schedule has always been to poop upon waking which is when the sleep diaper is on so we haven’t really solved that yet.

I do think yours is having more accidents than I would expect and the fact that most accidents are at school means he is capable but not getting enough help/prompting at school. Some teachers are better at this than others.

[Anonymous]

I would not describe this child as potty trained

[Anonymous]

This does sound like a lot of accidents. Not abnormal but I would say they need to do a better job having a routine at daycare to take him every couple of hours. It is probably just too chaotic for him there.

I would also read the section at the end of oh crap on poop if you haven’t already because she has a lot of tips. The poop part is not very uncommon. I would probably be doing a lot of naked/no underwear time at home to try to increase practice on weekends. For both our kids the oh crap type of approach worked quite well but it took longer than a weekend; we took a couple days off work to just make it a 5 day weekend. Obviously many can’t do that but I only say that to say it’s normal for them to not be on it after 2-3 days in my experience!

And all kids are different. My oldest never had an accident after like day 2 except like once when his younger brother was born. Younger brother had accidents here and there for a couple months when tired or too much going on.

[Anonymous]

It took a few years to be accident free.