We purchased a potty chair when Jackson was 18 months old. All that came out of that was a few cute pictures of him sitting on the toilet smiling. Potty training was attempted multiple times after that with no success. Then the entire summer that he was 2 years old he would not keep his diaper on. I took that as a sign he was ready for the potty. Boy, was I wrong! We had more messes that summer then ever before. I finally decided to wait a year, then try again. We got a lot of comments like "He's not potty trained yet?" "It's not that hard, just potty train him already." For me, it was not easy. Finding little "presents" all over the house was enough to make me mad. In the end I had to ignore those comments and let my son decide when HE was ready.
At the beginning of this summer I signed Jackson up for fall preschool. One of the stipulations for attending was that he had to be fully potty trained. I literally had 3 months to get him out of diapers and using the toilet full-time. I began talking to him about using the "big boy potty" earlier in the year. I wanted to work him up gradually. This summer, after telling him that he couldn't go to school unless he was out of diapers, we had a break through. Someone had mentioned letting him skip the little potty chair and having him stand up to pee in the big toilet. One day I went for it. I took a little paper star, stood him at the toilet and told him to "shoot the star". It became a fun game for him. Once I knew that he could do it I took diapers away completely during the day. For a week I had timers set for every 15-20 minutes. Slowly, the time lengthened between potty breaks. I made sure we didn't have to leave the house for the first 3 days, just so he could get used to the idea of using a toilet. On the 4th day we went to the grocery store. I had him go to the bathroom before we left, and at the store. He did amazingly well! There was a lot of praise that first week and a few accidents. When he did not make it to the toilet there was no yelling, just talking. "It's ok buddy, but next time you need to go in the toilet. It's not fun to be wet and yucky."
Within a month he was fully potty trained for pee. I really had to work on my patience because there were times when he had accidents. Sometimes he couldn't get his pants down fast enough once he was at the toilet. Other times he got caught up in playing and didn't realize he had to go. Eventually though he did get the hang of it and started going on his own. Going poop was/is a whole other story. We are currently in the 3rd month of potty training and finally getting somewhere with pooping.
This clip from Daniel Tiger is one of our favorite songs to sing about the potty:
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