Does anyone use a reward system?

My SIL's mom swears by m&m's. I'm wondering if that sets a bad candy precident. I don't think that stickers would work. I just want to see what others are doing other than praising to high heaven!

 

SIL started off using stickers on a chart on the bathroom door. She'd let them put the sticker on the chart. This was working well for her... until her mother watched them for a day and gave M&Ms. Once you go the candy route, it's tough to go back! They get one for a pee, two for a poop. Neither of them started with the tiny piddles to get the candy more often and they're still enjoying the sticker chart. My worry with this method, though, is what happens when you consider them trained and stop the candy? Will they regress to get the candy again?

Mine consider flushing the toilet a reward so we're going with that as long as it works because they'll always get to flush!

 

I found that external rewards didn't really help until we were almost done. Then, once they finished training, they each got a "big" reward--either a video or v-smile cartridge. Other than that, we did lots of cheers, hugs and kisses.

 

We went and let DD pick out little cheap toys ($5 or less, it only took like 6 toys).. and everytime she went #2 she got to pick one out.. Everytime she went #1 she got an M&M...

 

We did M&M's minis. A little after we were done, no more potty treats were given, and none were asked for.

 

We did stickers for pee and m&m's minis for poop. They got to fill a little chart with sticker and once it was filled they could pick a small toy or coupon for a trip to get ice cream from a basket. My dd responded very well to the reward system, we were giving m&m's for pee first and she would trickle a little get a reward and go back and trickle some more so we backed off and came back with new system. She trained very quickly and doesn't even ask for m&m's anymore. My ds just doesn't want to be bothered and nothing really motivates him to initiate.

 

With Nathan he got a piece of candy for peeing in the potty for the first couple of days. He was ready to be trained and pee trained very easily. Once he had the peeing thing down, we had to switch to candy only for pooping in the potty. Once we had several successes we stopped those candies too. He was allowed to wear big boy underware as long as he stayed clean for the day, but he had to wear a pull up or baby diaper if he had an accident, so he was determined to be a big boy. This so doesn't work at all with William.

 

We used jelly beans, choc money, or candy corn. But, only if they asked for it afterwards. It's fun at first to get the treat, but then it wears off and they forget to ask so we just used praise.

 

For DS1 we did M&Ms for pee and gummy bears for poop. Once he seemed to be getting the hang of potty-time, we slowly moved to a reward/sticker chart. We did incremental rewards (5 starts something small--maybe trip to the $ store; 10 stars a little bit bigger reward) and finally if he filled the chart (we started with a 20-star chart and slowly kept making that chart larger and larger) he got to go to Chuck E Cheese.

This method really worked well for me once he was ready to train. A lot of frustration in the beginning, but once the lightbulb went on there was no going back and he never seemed to notice when the candy disappeared (I of course would give him one if he asked for it, but as for as I remember he never did).

HTH!!

 

We have been using jelly beans, but we only give them if they ask. They are usually so excited about using the potty and getting to flush the toilet that they forget about the jelly beans. I think I am going to try to move to stickers or some other non-food reward.