Reply to Vicious cycle of stress while potty training, should we take ANOTHER break?

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Reply to "Vicious cycle of stress while potty training, should we take ANOTHER break?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DD is just over 2.5. We tried to do Oh Crap last Christmas but I was also nursing a baby and it was a disaster. We are trying again now (modified Oh Crap) and it's not going well. It's been two weeks of staying home with no bottoms on. We have had some success, mostly with poop ironically, but it's generally her holding it, refusing to pee on the potty and the peeing the second she stands up. She is anxious about peeing on the potty so she holds it, becomes uncomfortable, gets more anxious and it's spiraling. I am trying to keep is low key but it's hard when she's screaming and won't go near the potty. I don't want to make this worse, but will it only get worse the longer we wait? We have tried all the tricks- everything involving water, blowing bubbles, tickling etc. She is a pretty anxious toddler in general. [/quote]

She isnt ready. Dont make it a stressful thing. Back off for months. This is about control. She is withholding to maintain control. You can either say something like you know what? You are telling me that you arent ready even though I am ready for you to use the potty but this is about you not me. Lets try this another time. 
And then dont mention it. 
Then start in a few weeks with some new books. Talk about how every month you guys are going to get new books and Slip a potty book in to each delivery. 
Start reading about it and then only talk about it if she asks. Let her see you and spouse/partner/trusted adult go to the bathroom on a regular basis.  Then encourage trying the potty even with a pullup on. Then offer pullups or underwear and remind her that underwear means that you have to go into the potty. It wont catch your urine. Make a fun experiment of pouring water into a pullup vs underwear to show her the difference. 
[/quote]

I'm the PP above who had multiple terrible potty training tries before finally getting some progress at 3.5, and I just wanted to highlight that these suggestions are really good. We really had to take ALL the pressure off potty training and almost totally stop talking about it for a while to get our kid to kind of "reset". And when we started up again, we changed our tone completely. No pushing at all, if she said she wanted to wear a pull up we never fought her. We'd just let her know that meant she'd have to change her own pull up for pee (we'd help for poop but she still did a lot of it). And then when we'd change her we'd say "It will be nice when you decide to use the potty because we won't have to take such a long break to change your pull up. You'll be able to just go back to playing." Stuff like that. But just as info, never as a form of pressure. Trying to put deadlines around things or push her towards using the potty just always made it worse and set us back.

It's hard because you will get pressure from other people (family, friends, teachers) and it's really hard not to pass that pressure on to your kid. But I just learned that doing so didn't work. Putting them in charge looks indulgent to outsiders because they don't understand what it's like to be on Day 20 of trying to potty train an child who becomes anxious and tearful at the suggestion of anything related to using the potty.[/quote]

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