Potty training help mothers of B/G twins

Hi,

I need some potty training advise from those of you who have Boy/Girl twins. My kids turned 2 last month so we are thinking to start potty training, but we want to wait until their 2 years molars come in to get rid of that stress first. To prepare for potty training, we are reading them the Pott Book by Leslie Patricelly and we have some DVD's they watch once in a while. It seems that Max got the peeing part. I didn't expect it to happen since they say girls are better about it, but yesterday Max only peed in the potty the whole day. I read here on a thread that it helps if you draw a boat on toilet paper and put it in the potty and tell him to aim for it. I changed this advise a bit - we have paper towels with butterflies on them - so I am folding the paper towel to have the butterfly in the middle and tell him to aim for the butterfly and he does it all the time - he loves peeing on butterflies, who knew??? He is so proud of himself, we always applaud him and give him a high-five and we tell him he's a big boy now. Really he got that in 2 days without any other effort from us.

Well, the problem is Vanessa, she thinks she should pee standing also - she did it last night before their bath - right after Max peed. So how do we make her understand she can't do that? I told her girls sit down when they pee, I showed her how I sit down to pee (sorry if this is TMI). She doesn't want to sit on the potty longer than 5 seconds and she wants to pee standing . I don't want to stress her with this, but I was wondering if I am missing something and there's an easy way to make her understand.

Thanks and have a nice day,

Monica

 

When I PT'd my boys, they started peeing sitting down. It was a good few months before I allowed them to pee standing up because of their not so good aim.

My boys were 3 1/2 when they were PT'd and even now at almost 5, there are some places we will make them sit down to pee.

My advice would be to encourage your DS &DD to pee sitting down.

 

I also would encourage them both to sit down while peeing. Your DS is going to have to learn to sit to poop anyways. It could be pretty rough if he's insistent on standing while pooping

I started all my kids off sitting down consistently. Once the boys were well on their way to being completely trained I allowed them to stand some. Mostly because I'd let them stand while we were out shopping so they started standing at home too. But at least by then they already knew how to sit and knew they had to sit to poop anyways.

 

Both of mine started off sitting down to pee. What sort of helped that was that we do not have a toddler friendly potty. My son could not reach it to pee in while standing, so he had to sit on the toilet. One of the things that I used to tell both of my kids is that big boys stand to pee and girls sit down to pee and boys and girls sit to go poop.

I would just keep telling Vanessa that girls like her and Mommy sit to pee and if she has to go bathroom with you, I don't see the problem with that. I've done that with my kids too, especially DD.
My kids really liked the DVD Potty Power.

 

I would also encourage sitting down for both since a lot of little ones can't tell they also need to poop so you might have a surprise on the floor. My boy who was super easy to potty train (he did it on his own) just started peeing standing up and it hasn't been an issue at all with missing the toilet. He is 3 1/2. My other boy is still hit or miss. He pees standing up when we are out but prefers to sit when we are at home. Which is fine with me because he holds his pee until he really really has to go and it splashes everywhere so I actually like that he still sits at home. Less mess.

If you girl seems resistant I'd let it go. They are still young. You can keep reading the books and ask her if she wants to go. Even if she just sits for 5 seconds on the potty I'd call that a success at this age. Give her a high five for trying. You can also try having her sit on the potty while you read the potty book.

My boys always watch me go to the bathroom. They just follow me into the bathroom. It isn't a big deal at our house and it helps them to understand better how it all works. When they were smaller they argued over who handed me toilet paper and who got to flush. I haven't been to the bathroom without someone with me since before they could crawl.

 

Nolan and Michelle all sit and pee. They got trained at school first. At certain time of the day, they took a trip to bathroom. It became a habit, no pressure. And they just started asking to use bathroom at home. In our case, the twins actually wanted to do it. I was not ready yet lol.

But before they decided to use bathroom. They watched us going bathroom for months lol. We just didn't let them see us wipe...(sorry). I just don't want them to mess with it yet.

Just give them some ideas and take bathroom trips like every 2 hours (or right after wake up, before nap, at bath time, before bed time) for maybe 1-2 weeks. They will decide if they are ready for it. That way no pressure for any one. Make it new fun thing to do. Gl!

 

I agree with PPs. Talk to her about differences between boys and girls, including how they pee, let her watch you and tell her to do it like mom does. I am sure she will get it. 2 is still really early, she may just not be ready for sitting on the potty yet.

I had them both sitting down in the beginning. DS also started standing up when we were out and about and DH took him to public bathrooms a few times, but thankfully he still mostly sits at home.

 

I agree with the PP's as well. But have you thought about separating them when it comes time for them to use the potty, at least in the beginning? There is no reason that they both have to see how the other one does it. Yes, my all means, explain that boys can stand up and girls must sit down. You can have DD try out the potty first and then tell her it is DS's turn and let him stand. GL!

 

Thanks for your replies, I appreciate it. I had no idea it's wrong to teach a boy to pee standing, I just saw the thing with the drawing on a paper on a thread here and I tried it and it seemed to have worked. For now, we stopped it, hoping Max will forget the standing part and in another month or more - when hopefully their molars are all in - we can start thinking about potty training again. At least this experiment proved that he is able to control it and hold it in. It's a good idea to separate them also, I didn't think about that - just because they do everything together. We read books about it, and we have the Potty Power DVD and the Elmo Potty DVD and they seem to like them, so let's hope it will work, but as I said I am dreading this thing . I am sure I will have more questions when we do this next time also. My plan is to do the 3 day method over the Thanksgiving weekend , so we'll see how that works.