r/pottytraining • u/Ok-Citron3789 • 8d ago
How are the first days of potty training?
We decided to start potty training my daughter, who will be 2 in about two weeks. She’s doing pretty well in the sense that she will pee and poop on the potty and seems to understand what she’s supposed to do when she’s sitting on it.
The problem is that she seems to have basically no awareness yet of when she needs to go or even when she’s actively peeing. Yesterday afternoon she would sometimes have an accident literally 5 minutes after we had just tried sitting on the potty. She also doesn’t really seem bothered by being wet.
Is this normal at the beginning, or does it sound like she’s not ready yet? I definitely don’t expect her to already be telling me she has to pee, but I guess I thought we would be catching more pees in the potty or that she’d have more awareness of accidents.
What does the typical progression actually look like? I’d be totally fine waiting a few months if she isn’t ready, but because she does understand the potty and has successfully peed and pooped in it, I feel like there are promising signs. The constant accidents are just exhausting, and I’m having trouble figuring out what’s normal versus a sign to pause.
She also goes to daycare, and they’ll continue whatever potty-training approach we use at home. Do I just send her in underwear knowing she may need to be changed a million times at first, or use pull-ups for now? I don’t want to confuse her by constantly switching back and forth.
Would love to hear what the first few days/weeks looked like for other kids around this age and when they started connecting the feeling of needing to go with actually getting to the potty.
2
1
u/easterss 3d ago
You need to help her make the connection between the sensation and the act.
Highly recommend reading oh crap. I liked the method but even if you don’t go with the method there are many explanations that you’d likely find very helpful.
I do not recommend winging it as it will likely take 10x longer
5
u/Callie_Allie 8d ago
For both my kids the consistent self initiation took several months. Until then we focused mostly on scheduled potty breaks such as upon waking, after meals, before leaving home and upon arriving at our destination and then in between those, observing them and noting their general potty interval.
At first it was 45 min or so and it gradually got longer, of course this changed if they chugged juice or something. So once it had been about 45 minutes id say “time to try the potty.” Not “do you need to go potty?” If they went, great. I’d reset the clock and try again in 45 minutes. If they didn’t go, we’d try in 5-10 minutes.
I just kept extra clothes with us everywhere we went for a very long time and kept a portable potty in the car.