She Did It!!

After reading all the feedback I got after asking about potty training we went out and bought some knickers and put them on Chloe yesterday afternoon. I ask her every so often if she needs to go potty and she will say yes if she does, she hasn't had any accidents yet but I wondering if I should really be asking her if she need to go so often or not? She hasn't come up to me and told me she needs to yet so I'm not sure if she will or if she is too shy about it. She has only done wees on the potty and waited until I put a nappy on her for bed before she did poos. Does anyone have any ideas to overcome this or is it just a matter of time?

I didn't use a potty, I just went straight to putting Kiya on the toilet. I put her on every hour during the day until she got the idea, then I increased the intervals between sending her to the toilet. We used a sticker chart to encourage her to go herself, a sticker every time she went in the toilet and 20 stickers to fill up the chart. When she'd completed a chart, we went for a walk to the dairy and I bought her a lollipop or an iceblock. Maybe something similar would work for Chloe.

It worked with Kiya, however, she was 3yrs4mths when I started TT her. Once Kiya was going regularly, I changed the way I rewarded her to a sticker for staying dry rather than a sticker for going to the toilet.

We did the intervals breakfast to lunch, lunch to afternoon tea, afternoon tea to dinner, and a bonus sticker if she'd stayed dry all day. As an immediate bonus, if Kiya had stayed dry all day she got to ring her grandparents and tell them before she went to bed. When she was staying dry regularly (took about 3 weeks) we bought her Piglet's Big Movie on DVD, and propped it up on top of the fridge where she could see it but not reach it. Kiya had a chart & a half left to fill in (about 30 stickers) and then she got the movie to keep. That was her last reward.

You and Chloe are the best judges of when she's ready. I tried with Kiya several times from when she was about the same age as Chloe, but she wasn't ready until just over 3yrs old.

Kiya was still in night nappies until 3yrs7mths, and we'd been night TTing her for 2 weeks when she broke her arm! As we couldn't guarentee the cast would stay dry overnight, we put her back into nappies until after the cast came off 7 weeks later.

Its common for children to revert. Kiya had been day TT for 6 months and night TT for 5 weeks when she reverted. We told her we knew she could do better, and gently encouraged her to start trying again. She wanted us to bring back the sticker charts, but we refused. Instead, we praised her lots for staying dry during the day, and gave her a lollipop (just a cheap one from a multipack) if she stayed dry all night. It worked!

Sorry, can't help - Kiya was one of those kids who figured out how to control her bowels first.