another PT question

Potty training at home is going great. I'd say they're 95% trained - still an occasional accident, but for the most part they go do everything in the potty chairs without any reminders at all. :woo:

I'm unsure about how to go about ditching diapers when we go out. I know they can hold it (yesterday we were out for a couple hours, and their diapers were dry when we got home, and as soon as they got out of them, they peed in the potties), and I know they're good at it... I'm just afraid of having accidents when we're out. We're doing cloth diapers, and I REALLY don't want to spend money on pull-ups if I can possibly avoid it. I'm also afraid that they might be scared of using toilets outside the house - they don't even want anything to do with the toilets at home! Any ideas on how to tackle this one?

 

Holly~ I did pull-ups for a while after they were trained. I was scared of the possible public accidents especially at church. :lol: It is funny that you mention the public restrooms. My girls are terrified of the loud flushing toilets and the ones that flush automatically almost send them into cardiac arrest. :faint:

:hug:

 

Okay, I did learn one thing from Kate Gosselin :lol: You can drape a piece of toilet paper over the sensor on the auto toilets and it wont flush until you take the paper off. :good:

 

OMG, I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :laughing:

 

Pick a day and just do it! Tell your kids that it's time to go diaper-free in the car and in the store or wherever you're headed. Pick a place that has a decent bathroom and no carpet on the floors -- Childrens Museum, Home Depot, etc. and go run an errand. Realize that you probably won't get anything done because you'll be too stressed asking if anyone has to pee.

If you have a plastic potty, throw that in the back of your car in case anyone has to go on the way to the store. The Bjorn potty in the back of our SUV saved me countless times the first few months that we went out with no diapers.

You can do this...

 

The Fisher Price Potty on the Go is a great product for your car, if you don't want to take them to a public restroom. We used it for years with Nadia.

We've never had issues with the automatic flush, but I have several friends who carry a piece of duct tape in their wallets (stuck on the back of a credit card or something) -- to disable the sensor until their kids are finished.

I haven't trained a boy yet, but I found girls are hard in public restrooms -- Nadia had to sit with her legs spread wide apart for balance, and then she'd end up peeing *out* of the toilet, and all over her underwear/pants, and all over me. It took a long time before we figured it out.

So, be prepared with extra clothes!

I did do pull-ups in public for awhile, just for my own peace of mind.

 

Great ideas! Thank you!

Would it be terrible if I waited a while on this? We have preschool "interviews" coming up bad: but that's life around here when you're trying to get into a school that isn't a pile of dog doo) and I really don't want to stress about them having an accident.

 

What about using rubber pants over their underwear? They won't completely contain an accident, but they will help. We used those over underwear until we were more comfortable going out in public. I also kept a pack of sticky notes in the diaper bag and put that over the automatic flush sensors. That worked pretty well also.

 

Of course not. Your kids are so verbal, so just discuss with them that they should still ask to go to the bathroom when you're out, but the diaper is "just in case."

You know toddlerhood is all about doing whatever works!

Good luck with preschool interviews -- wow, we have some crazy schools and application processes here, but I never had to take 2-year-olds for an interview. Egad.

 

It's probably not as bad as it sounds - the kids' "interview" is just joining in a regular preschool class and playing, and the teachers observe them. It's even ok if they don't want mom or dad to leave the room. The parents have an interview with the admissions directors.

But still, it's not college, for crying out loud! :faint: I'll be so glad when this is behind us.

 

Holly, we just went through preschool interviews in November and oh my gosh - what a source of stress it was for me. I agree with Becca34, no need to add potty accidents to your stress during interviews. I like the idea of telling your kids that they can use the toilet when out, and that the diapers are for extra insurance! Good luck with the interviews...

 

We did pull ups or training pants when we went out (for a while). I also had a foldable, portable potty seat that I always took because my DD's were sort of afraid of the big potty. Fascinated, so we had to use it at every single place we went, but scared to sit on it without their seat.

 

Of course not! Do it when you're ready!


In the beginning, I packed an extra set of pants and underwear per child in my diaper bag, and another set, and diapers, in the car. We also kept a small potty in the car with wipes, a roll of paper towels, and baggies. There have been MANY times in the beginning I just let them go in the car if they were nervous to go in the public potties.

It can be done, you CAN do this, you might be surprised how easy it is. :good:

 

Holly, for us, once we truly started with potty training, it was underwear or naked all the time at home (minus naps and night, still doing diapers for those...oh yeah and pooping... *sigh* cannot get these girls to poop on the potty to save my life!) :headbang:

Anyway, as long as it's pee...we're good! And what I wanted to say was I'm still having the girls wear pull ups when we're out. *But* they think of them as going out underwear, and they don't pee in them like they would a diaper. I even had Searra tell me that she needed to pee just after I finished loading her and her sister and all the groceries into the car, I asked her if she could hold it and she made it the 20 minutes home!

We actually had our one of our only accidents in a pull up today and for some reason Ellie pooped in it :blink: So pull ups are only special going out underwear for us. I've been trying to figure out when to give up *my* crutch!

 

I was really anxious about this, but it turned out to barely be an issue. For the first several months after they gave up the diapers, I brought at least 2 extra changes of clothes every time we left the house, but they hardly ever had an accident! (They were way more likely to have accidents at home, actually.)

They also never had any fear of potties away from home -- some kids do, I guess we just got lucky. They were always very proud when they could use a potty at the library, restaurant, etc. The worst thing that happened was trying to figure out how many times we would let them go potty during a simple dinner out. :ibiggrin:

I bought some plastic pants and training pants, but never used any of them.

Regarding peeing all over the place, the thing that saved me was something Kelly (Snittens) posted here -- have them lean waaaayy forward (I would have them lean on me). That points the pee down into the potty. After a couple of weeks, they learned to do this instinctively.

 

We never messed with the pull-ups for going out of the house. I had alot of hesitations with Timothy, but he only ever had 1 accident out of the house. And it was outside at the zoo.

I guess I felt like the diaper or pull-up said to the kids "I don't trust you". Timothy even called me on it. I still did use a diaper for church for the next week. They were going to Bible class where I wasn't the teacher. I was really hesitant to send them to a teacher who wasn't familiar with their cues and their phrasing about needing to go the bathroom. Timothy threw a fit. He was being a big boy and he wanted to be a big boy and he did not want that diaper for church. So I didn't. I took him right before and right after class and he did great.

We instead started a policy of we didn't leave the house unless everybody tried, even mommy. We would go out and immeadiately do our errands and come home. If we were out for slightly extended periods, I would stop and make everyone try, even mommy. I would do that, for example, between storytime and then going outside the library to the park. The part I thought was the funniest was how much money you can save the first few months they are potty-trained. You are either staying home and not doing much shopping. Or what little shopping you are doing is straight off the list and then going right back home so you don't have to deal with the circus of 2 toddlers and a bathroom.

Marissa