help! potty training..

my twins are gonna be 2 and a half this week and honestly we have not potty trained at all. I don't even know where to begin.. I kind of always felt wait until they are ready but how do I know if they are ready? They tell me when they poop - either before or after but they never mention anything about peeing so I don't know if they understand how to tell when they pee. They know about the potty and have a little one they just use as a toy pretending to poop on. Any advice on how/when to being would be appreciated. Also one of them has constipation issues so we have to give her medicine that helps her go and am not sure if she can control her poops as much..

 

The best I can suggest to see if they are ready is to either try them out in underwear for the weekend and see how they do...if they are having more accidents then you care for, you can always try again another time.
Here is link to a potty training readiness quiz

 

I recommend trying the 3 day potty training method... it's mentioned in several of the other PT threads. If they know when they are pooping, i'd say you have a great shot at PTing easily... My dd didn't really have all the readiness signs but she's the one who trained sort of by herself once we gave her access to the potty...

good luck! ours are pros now - we started training a bit before 24 mo. but I didn't get serious about it and do the 3 day training until after our summer vacation - they were 27.5 mo old. that was 5 months ago, and they've done great!

 

Here is what we did so they would be ready

1-have them stand naked in the tub before turning on the water, when they do pee, cheer and make a big deal of it that way they know what it feel like. We started this at 18 mo and by 2 they were ready.
2-

 

One thing we did when we were introducing the potty to them is have them sit on the potty before bath (while we were filling the tub) and if they went we would cheer and make a big deal out of it. Once they were comfortable with that we would do it first thing in the morning, at bath time and before bed. We did this for a while and then when we decided to potty train we would have them sit on the potty more often. My girls we pushed a little and one pee trained quickly but had constipation problems so that took a long time to get through, the other one wasn't ready and she decided on her own at almost 3 that she was ready and trained herself, and for my son we did the bottomless training and that worked really well for him and he trained very quickly (he did well as long as he was bottomless it did take a little while for him to get used to wearing pants and then underwear and pants). I do wish we didn't push our girls into potty training like we did but we didn't know any better. My one daughter I think got constipated from that and we have had issues for years with her. So if they aren't ready I wouldn't push them, they will let you know when they are ready and it will be so much easier (the one that trained first is a pleaser my other daughter is head strong).

 

how do you know when they are ready?

 

Some signs are them wanting to be changed as soon as they pee in the diaper.
Asking to sit on the potty
waking up dry from nap (that shows that they can hold their pee)
Staying dry for an hour or more (also shows they can hold it)
I am sure there are more but can't think of them right now.

You can try introducing it to them and if they are excited about it then try, keep going with it. If they seem scared of the potty or just refuse to sit then let them be and try again in a couple of months. It's not worth the fight to train them. That's why we did it slowly with introducing the potty at bath time first and when they were comfortable with that we did bed and then nap time. They never really did anything but and had a few successes by accident but we cheered and praised when it happened. Like I said my one daughter took to peeing right away on the potty and the other fought it so we waited with her. We tried a second time and she still wanted nothing to do with it and then on her own she decided she was ready and she trained very easily and quickly. I can't believe how many times we struggled with her and tried pushing her since we didn't know any better and listened to others around us saying she should be trained (just before 3 she decided she was ready so she was still young).