Potty training help

I’m at a loss and feel like I’m failing!

My daughter is nearly 2.5. We started the oh crap method a few months again and was not successful and caused a lot of stress. We decided to park it and try again over Easter (I’m a teacher so have the time off during this period). My daughter came to us one evening and said she needed a poo and sat on the potty and did one, so we thought great, let’s try this again. We had two amazing days, she would happily sit on the potty, did a few wees and a poo and one accident. The following days have been hell. Absolute refusal to sit on the potty, meltdowns and distress at even the word, would cry until her nappy was back on. This is what happened last time which is why we decided to park it. I have no idea where to go with this, I’m aware she’s coming out of the ‘peak window’ and don’t want to miss the boat but also don’t want to cause her this much stress!

We have tried everything: books, songs, role play, sticker chart, chocolate, praise, potty, toilet seat, I don’t know what else to do and have been made to feel like I’m failing!

Any advice or someone in a similar situation - everyone I seem to know managed to crack potty training within 3 days!

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So sorry you’re going through this. We tried the Oh Crap method and it didn’t work for us at all. I found potty training really stressful and upsetting with my little one. At first, he would refuse to go and would hold everything in until his nap or bedtime. Now we’re a little further along it turns out he didn’t like the pressure of being asked if he needs to go and he really likes privacy when he does go to the point he tells us to get out. I think we went in too hard because of everything we read in the Oh Crap book and our expectations misaligned.

He was also really scared of pooing so we had a conversation about it being natural and made some brown playdoh to put in the potty to take the fear away.

To be quite honest, even those children who do get it in the first week still regress. Please don't feel like a failure, potty training is the single most stressful parenting thing to do. I do think that if we stress it makes them stress & it can build up resistance.

I agree with the other comment, relieve the pressure & give choices. 'Would you like to use the toilet or the potty?', 'Which knickers would you like to wear, the flowery ones or the blue ones?'. Allow your child to be in charge of their own automony .

Make it fun, whenever my eldest used to to resist going to the toilet I used to make it a race of, who could get to the toilet first .

I found that once my eldest was in the school nursery, the accidents became less as other children were using the toilet. I think that it does help for children to be around other children who are doing the same thing as them. Or, even just seeing us going to use the toilet & normalising it.

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