Pregnancy & Parenting

My son, 28 months, expressed an interest in using the potty yesterday.  He pooped twice and peed in it once.  We made a huge deal of it, and he seemed really proud of himself.  :)

Now my question...his potty chair has a cup on the front to block his urine stream and keep it in the potty.  However, the stream seems to go above the cup, so it doesn't block anything.  My aunt and a friend both told me not to bother with a potty chair for a boy and to just put him on the toilet.  I'm just wondering what you mommies and daddies of boys did to teach them to urinate without making a huge mess?

Also, my son drinks water non-stop all day long.  I refill his sippy cup more times than I can count.  I know all that water causes him to urinate very, very frequently.  I don't want to discourage him from drinking water if he's thirsty, but at the same time, if he's constantly drinking, will that make it harder to potty train him?  I don't want to have to sit him on the potty every few minutes, but I do want to get him out of diapers if he's ready. 

Any tips or advice is appreciated!

In my opinion unless he is really stable sitting on the potty (some have a fear of falling after the first time it happens to them) i used to potty train preschoolers too at a daycare and i think keeping him on a potty chair for a while might help.  You can also buy seats that sit on a regular toliet after he gets used to a potty chair, it helps him feel more confident on a toliet then you can gradually take it off.  Also with my son (who's now 12) i wished i wouldn't have gone the pull up route during the day because he thought it was a diaper and peed in it anyways.  With my daughter i used the really thick training cloth training pants and when she peed in them she didn't like being wet.  We just used pullups at night it was easier to clean a pullup in the morning than training pants.  But during the day i just used the training cloth pants ( i think they still make these) gerber used to make them.  They look like regular underwear they are just thicker.  I did have to wash alot of them but they dont like feeling wetness against their skin so i think they train faster than pullups during the day.  Sounds like he is making progress though.  Eventually if they kept doing it we rewarded dry days with character panties/underwear in their fave cartoon caracters.  Mine really liked that!!

Clarice

I potty trained my DS when he was about 2 years old. Actually he was done with diapers before he was 2.5 years old. 

 

I first started iwth a potty chair.  You might want to get a Bjorn potty.  They are very tall in the middle and just the right size for an older child doing potty training.  Plus they are one peice so there's "mystery" places for pee and poo to hide. 

After he had the potty chair down pretty well I started putting him on the toilet, with an insert. I had a 3 in 1 potty so that made it easier. 

After that go old I taught him how to pee outside. I had some flowers in bloom and I taught him to aim at the flowers LOL. He got a big kick out of that. 

Then he started peeing standing up inside.  Now I showed him how to hold his penis so pee wouldn;t spray everywhere. However he picked up the bad habit of just letting things fly from his dad.  His dad just kinda stands there but he's 40 yeears old and has MUCH more penile control than a now 4 year old.  Now that we are moving I am going to buy some blinky balls. Its this little blinking light you put in the toilet and tell them to pee on it.  You can also do the same thing with Cheerios.  Its called the "sinker" game LOL.

Pull ups are evil..but they saved my neck at night.  My DS was exclusively cloth diapered. I stopped using any material that would make him fill dry at about 18 months of age and talked about being wet.  However, after he was free of bulky cloth diapers, he didn't want to wear them at night. So I hung my pride on a hook and bought a pack of pull ups.  Which might I add he hated. He said he didn't like wearing paper however i could actually get him to wear them.  I went through one mega pack and two regular packs before I was sure he was done peeing on the bed. These days he'll wake up in the middle of the night and go potty.  About a week or so ago he woke me to tell his bladder woke up before he did.

I am working with my son right now. He is too big for the training potty, and I have a seat for the toilet. From my experience, unless he is far enough back (on the real toilet) he urinates right off the side of that one, too. Also, it seems so impractical because he can't get up on the toilet by himself....so, I am looking for other options.

I have seen a training urinal for boys at walmart, but I don't know what to think. It has gotten very good reviews. Check it out: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?pro duct_id=5301812

 

Thanks for the advice ladies!!!  We bought some pull-ups and real underwear last night.  I'm going to keep him in diapers for the next few days, though.  My husband's schedule is such that he has extended amounts of time off, so we're going to try pull-ups and/or real underwear when everyone is at home and we can all get into some sort of routine together. 

Weddingmama, I went to Babies R Us last night and bought the Baby Bjorn potty.  So far, I love it!!!!!!  My son wanted to try it out right away, and the splash guard actually worked like it should-no pee on the floor! :)  I will recommend this potty to anyone trying to potty train a boy.  I know we've only had a day to work with it, but I think it's fantastic.  Thanks for steering me in that direction! 

My son realized immediately that if you put Anything at all into the potty seat it would sing, so no poop or pee ever made it in. We got a seat for the toilet and taught him to sit and push it down, very effectively.  It worked well because even though he can stand at home now, sometimes out in public they are too tall in the women's rooms and he has to sit. He does it with no problem!  Plus, I liked using the regular potty because then when we went out he wasn't scared of it!