toilet training/learning

I set out with my daughter [two and a half] her toileting goals -- first, clean & dry days; second, clean & dry nights; third, buy big-girl underpants [she is in training underpants now].


My question is how long should she attain each goal before we move on to the next one? It has been a week now and she has been dry for 3 days, so we are planning to move on to step 2. Is this too early?


She is already a savvy little consumer [her first complete sentence was "mama buy new red hat"], so the prospect of going out to buy new big-girl underpants is definitely helping to drive her success, and I don't want to play my ace prematurely.

Agreed with cara. Far too early for step two. Also I wouldn't put too much pressure as this is a case where it easily backfires.


As for "big-girl" underpants, I assume you mean panties. You should already have bought those! ;) Sure, you'll get pee on some. But that's part of training. I doubt it will have any effect on night time wetting.


For the record, Our #1 was dry at night at 2 and 3 months, about 3 months after dry during the day. But I think that was mostly luck. One evening she simply said "I don't need a diaper at night anymore" and we tried that. It worked but it could as easily have meant a wet bed.

Okay, I should clarify a bit -- she is dry when she wakes up about half the time now -- at least as dry as doesn't make any difference in a disposable diaper, and it may be more than half the time as I often don't come onto the scene in the morning until after she's had her milk-juice cocktail.


What we are using now are thick white cotton "training underpants" but what she covets are the yellow underpants with purple hearts that Dora is wearing in Dora's potty book. I guess in my mind they are "big-girl" underpants [which we chose over the word panties partly because it works for both genders, and partly because of the gnomes...] if they are thin rather than 2cm thick. My mother's suggestion was to go ahead and give her [training] underpants at night [she wants them] and put a maxipad inside to soak up any pee.


But I'm glad for the two votes to buy sooner rather than later. I don't want her to lose interest in the project -- she is terrific so far -- just has a little quirk of only wanting to use her own setup, but it's only been a week..

Quite frankly I don't see the point of these "training underpants". I actually had to google the term to see what they were. Our girls went straight from diapers to panties.

Yes, buy big girl pants now to keep her interested. You could try no nappy at night if you want but otherwise just leave it on and point out when she is dry in the morning. Sounds like she has done a great job and will do the nights when she is ready.


My 2yr2 month old is trained for the day for pee still some poo incidents but those are getting better with having her out of nappies. She has also been dry the last 2 mornings but I am not ready to do without the night nappy yet. I am still considering night training her brother who is 4 so don't want to be up so many times to change sheets!


It will happen naturally and does not always need such a set of goals.

Thanks everybody. Just an update -- we did buy her big-girl underpants last week; she has been totally day-dry for quite some time [maybe 10 days or more by now], we still put a diaper on her at night, but she is dry when she wakes up most mornings, so that will probably go soon as well.


About training underpants -- not necessary at all, but since we had them, we used them. And actually, the last accident that she had was when we were at the park and she couldn't *quite* go there and couldn't *quite* make it home -- and in that case, it was nice that she was wearing the trainers, b/c even though they got damp, they were so absorbent that nothing else got wet [not the pram, not me, not her brother...] Plus, I think that it was good to get her into underpants and also have something to look forward to once she was trained [day trained at least].