What's the point of training pants?

Are training pants supposed to contain the pee, but be more uncomfortable than a wet diaper? Or do they just make it a little less messy if the child has an accident?

Apparently our daycare is "not allowed" to use pull-ups -- not sure why. I asked the teacher this morning what the usual procedure was, and she said kids usually just go straight from diapers to underwear. She wasn't opposed to training pants, but wasn't sure what the point of them was (and neither am I).

 

Alden, I think the NO PULL UPS is a great idea because they really get TRAINED and quickly!!!

Training pants are thicker (made of cloth diaper material) and DO sorta contain the mess and liquid better. (That's why underwear are MORE effective.) You are still going to have to change pants if they tinkle in training pants, so just do underwear!!

 

I have a few pairs of training pants. I use them mostly if someone is having an accident prone day... usually Annika. They are thicker, so if she pees in those, there isn't a puddle on the floor. She's wet, her clothes are wet, but not the carpet. When we leave the house, as little as possible during this intense training period, I put plastic pants over the underwear or training pants. That's just a percation for the carseats.

 

They soak up the pee a little better, but I usually skip them. (I think the disposable training pants are totally worthless.)

 

I was thinking of using them instead of pull-ups because pull-ups are so darn expensive! We're at the stage where Bea is fairly good at going pee and initiating, Ainsley doesn't initiate, but will go if prompted about half the time. So because they still want to go potty, I'm using pull-ups so they go pull them up and down. Our preschool actually wants them in pull-ups if not all the way potty trained. I don't know, maybe I'll try underwear again later.

 

We never used training pants with DD1, but I will second the posts that the pull-up are useless...even the "feel n'learn" didn't phase my DD, she treated them just as regular diapers (only more expensive!), finally on the advice of the preschool teacher, we went cold turkey to panties about two weeks before preschool started. After the second day - no more accidents!!