When did you start?

[mom78]

My daughter will be 21 months when our second baby is due.  I would love to have her potty trained by then, but is that completely unrealistic?  We do use cloth diapers and I have heard that might make potty training easier.  Would love to hear when other people have started potty training.

[jjminino]

22 months is when my little girl started.  She does great with potty but no luck on the poo portion.  How long before your due?

[mom2lulu]

We (our nanny) started with our daughter at 18 months. We moved in the process, so we got off track. We went cold turkey to underwear when my daughter turned 2. We have a week of transition (no pullups, just put her on the toilet after she ate, drank or napped) and we were good after about two weeks.

I would start with the 21-month-old one now. We had our second when the oldest was 2.5 and it was nice to have her trained.

My youngest is nearly 1.5 and we plan to start with her in late fall.

[ckaustin]

It depends on the child but it is possible. My 1st daughter was potty trained right at 2, my next it took a year to train her completely (she had a baby brother, too, though). My boy was trained shortly after 2. I tried to train all my kids before they were 2...but for whatever reason it did not work for us.

What did work, though...
We did not use pull ups.
We decided one day to train and there was no going back. Cold turkey. There were a few HORRIBLE days in there but we had to stick with it.
With the girls, I put them in dresses and played outside for most of the day - playset, play doh, bubbles, chalk, any inside toy that I could take outside (it was summer). I had them wear dresses and NO UNDERWEAR. When they started to go potty, I had the potty right there and sat them on it (lift the dress and go - quick and easy). Then they quickly got the connection - the potty should go in the potty. After they got the connection and started going to the potty, I moved to thicker training pants underwear made by gerber sold at target. Not plastic pants, they are called training pants. They are just a thicker underwear. They girls would go through them sometimes but my son never leaked out of them when he had an accident (and they do happen). After a few days of her understanding and going potty, take her shopping and have her use a big girl potty. They have to get used to using public restrooms too.
At night, we used a training pant (just the cotton thicker undies) and a waterproof pad. Try not to use a diaper at night after catches on during the day. It just confuses things and makes breaking that habit more difficult.

Before long - you will be back to having one in diapers...your baby.
Also...as someone else mentioned, have her go right when she gets up, after breakfast, after every meal/snack/activity, always before getting in the car and going to bed. I would insist that the kids go potty every 1 -1 1/2 hours at first after they got the connection. They many times would have accidents because they did not want to stop playing to go. This just helps to keep them on track.

Good luck!

[ReillysMom]

Reilly was fully day time trained by 26 months and we didn't actively start training her until 25-1/2 months.  But she was ready and practically trained herself.  The first week we tried using pull-ups and she quickly figured out they were diapers that she could pull on and off; the second week we went cold turkey into cloth trainers she had one accident and that was it.

What worked best for us (other than cloth trainers/no pull ups) was that she transitioned into her 2 year old class at day care when she was 23 months old and all of the other kids in her class were closer to 36 months... it was seeing the older kids that made her want to potty train.

Now, she is 32 months and she is one of 2 in her day care class that are potty trained.  It seems to me that most kids seem to train closer to 3 years old.

For public restrooms with auto-flushing toilets, bring along a pad of sticky notes to cover the eye to avoid unexpected flushing.

[mom78]

Thanks for all the feedback!