My child just turned two. She will go a couple a weeks where she tells us that she needs to go to the potty, but then she loses interest. Right now she will tell us when she needs a “clean bottom”, or has a “stinky”, but she won’t use the potty.

Can anyone who has been there done that give me some advice?

    

Some kids won't potty train on anyone's timeline but their own. If she just turned two, I wouldn't worry about it too much. My son turned two in May, and has ZERO interest in the potty, except to wave bye-bye to the pee-pee when other people go. He will also tell me when he's dirtied his diaper, so sort of the same situation as your daughter.

My daughter had a Pooh Bear training potty, as we wanted a gender-neutral one. Then she saw a newspaper ad for a Princess potty and wanted it so badly she couldn't stand it. I told her if she'd go in the Pooh Bear potty once, I'd get her the Princess potty. She did, I did, and aside from the normal phase of accidents, we never looked back. She was about 2-1/2 or so then.

I agree that it's best not to rush a child into potty training. My son was a little over 3 when he expressed interest, and he trained within a month. My friend insisted on training her son at 2, and he had numerous accidents because he just wasn't ready.

My son loved Thomas the Tank Engine, so we gave him one Thomas sticker for peeing in the potty and 2 stickers for pooping. We also bought a potty-training video that he enjoyed.

My little boy will be 3 in a few weeks and I'm thinking about getting him one of the Peter Pottys. It's a urinal for toddlers and I figure it makes sense to let him learn to wee standing up. The pooping, I have no clue. He's been hiding to go. Then he won't tell me or his dad which is pretty annoying. No matter how many times we tell him he isn't in trouble, we just want to clean him so he doesn't get a sore bottom.

I don't know why he'd hide it...other than telling him we want to keep his bottom clean, we don't say anything else-especially nothing to make him feel bad!

Thank you all for the advice. I guess we are on track, and when she is really ready she will let me know. We bought her a little potty that she was ecstatic about, and used once. She really likes the ring that sits in the big potty. I guess it makes her feel big. She also wants to use a whole roll of tissue paper. It is amazing how there little minds work.

We had both the potty ring and the individual potty chair. My son started out using the chair and then switched to sitting on the ring once he'd gotten the hang of potty training. It was so nice not having to clean the potty chair out anymore!

I've never seen the urinal-style potty, what a neat idea!

Wow.. Am so glad I found this.. Was planning on asking the ques. myself. My toddler is 18 months and right now she just tells me when she's already done 'poopy' but now before. I do have an individual potty chair for her and people have been telling me to put her on it every hour or so, but I find that a little strange?? Any one have any experience with this strategy of trying to 'catch' the poop and pee??

Just my opinion, but I think when you take them every hour then you have yourself trained to take them to the potty not them trained to know when they have to potty.
One thing I have been doing that helps some is if she wakes up from naps or in the morning and has a dry diaper she goes straight to the potty. So far that is the only time she can tell me so she can make it to the potty before she has gone.
It is so funny how they know they have went, and tell you as soon as they have but they can’t tell you right before so you can go to the potty.