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I did the three day method this summer with DD. She had just turned 3. I put a tarp down in our living room and kept her in there for a majority of the time. She had a lot of accidents at first and wasn't thrilled, but she was out of diapers by the end of it. She still had a fair amount of accidents for awhile if we didn't prompt her to go.

I bribed her with chocolate chips. She got one every time she went potty, and two every time she pooped.

Edited to add that the gradual approach didn't work for us. I think that's just our DD's personality. She needed to know she was done.

We had a similar situation and just waited. We had a few months of potty interest and willing to sit on the potty, etc, but nothing super consistently stuck. Also, my son does NOT like being pantless, he does NOT like hanging out naked, and he also did not like the small potty seats. It was big potty, if at all.

When we tried to do an all-in approach, he was not about it. And that caused him to resist the potty. So we backed off for a while - like 3 months maybe. We didn't talk about the potty or push it. All we asked was that he sit on the potty before his evening bath and he rarely went, but it was just a part of our routine so he didn't really fight that. He was already naked and in the bathroom, so it wasn't a huge deal to him.

Like I said, we did not raise the issue of the potty at all for a few months. It had become a power thing and he had some friends at school who were having tough potty experiences so he had a bad association. (His one good friend wouldn't poop on the potty and so he held it and held it and then would have EXPLOSIVE poops that went EVERYWHERE and the entire teaching staff would have to swoop into a hazmat situation to disinfect the classroom and move the kids out and it was chaos for a few weeks).

Then after a few months, we just casually put him in undies that he liked just in the evenings after daycare and at home on the weekends with us. If we went out in public or for any sleep, he was in a diaper. He had frequent accidents, we never stressed him out about it (just kept thick towels on the couches), but we would just remind him to tell us if he needed to use the potty. He almost always has to poop each night around 630pm, so he actually started telling us he needed to poop on the potty. This oddly meant he actually poop trained before pee training. After a few weeks, it was just his routine to change into underwear when he got home and even when he peed in them, it wasn't a big deal. He would ask for a new pair of underwear and move on.

After about 2 weeks of very few accidents at home, we gave daycare a heads up. He peed himself at school 1-2x a day for the first week, then we had 1-2 accidents total the following week, and now he's trained. He still needs a pull-up at nap and bedtime, but he's had no accidents in over a month now?

Basically, he did it himself. It really clicked for him when daycare showed him how to pee standing up. He finds it terribly amusing, so he doesn't miss an opportunity to pee.

I am one of those hardcore parents who really believes in teaching kids skills, but I tend to see potty-training more developmental like walking or crawling. You can't really force the issue - when they're ready, they're ready. It was super painless for us to just leave him alone and I have no regrets waiting. He is almost 39 months.

I would sort of play it by ear. Put the potty out now, start asking if he wants to try using it, but don't push it. Christmas is still a few weeks away and he might be interested again by then if you start trying to re-introduce the potty in a low key way now. If he's still not feeling it by then, I wouldn't push it, but keep offering it as an option.

@PawPrints: You're not the only person by any means. I read that book, hated every word of it, tried it anyway for a day over Christmas break, gave up because it sucked for all of us (not even because of messes but because of the pressure and constant attention on the whole process), and decided to wait it out instead, and my kid basically trained herself as well. A few months later, right before she turned 3, she just asked for underwear, and we were done with it.

@Muffinsmuffins, I personally am a big proponent of letting the kid take the lead. I completely understand the desire to just be done and over with it, but at least for my kid, we actually set the whole process back if we pushed her on something. She didn't really resist the process, but as soon as she felt like she was pressured, she just disengaged, kinda like "lah lah lah, I'm not listening." We had a hard time with training her to poop on the potty - she really just didn't want to - and eventually she was just ready. It's really hard to wait, but I've found that works better for my kid. And if yours is resisting, that's something to be mindful of, I think, and giving him more time.

So my son was showing absolutely ZERO interest in potty training, but my husband was 100% over diapers, so we decided to force the issue. We did Oh Crap!/3 day potty training.

Day 1: Naked - went great! We got out his little potty, put it in the living room, showed him where to go, and he did it all on his own.

Day 2: Pants - DISASTER! He had multiple accidents and I'm not sure he made it to the potty even once. But according to Oh Crap!, that's to be expected, so I tried to keep my spirits up.

Day 3: Pants - 2 accidents and made it to the potty once. Progress!

Day 4: Daycare - one accident at daycare and didn't go on the potty at all. CLEARLY had to go when we got home, but resisted my prompting. Had an accident.

Days 5-8: Multiple accidents - started holding it all day at daycare or going in his nap diaper and then just having an accident as soon as he got home. I was starting to harp on him more and I was getting frustrated and I wanted to give up completely! Finally had a conversation with Hubs and we decided we were pressuring him too much and he was resisting, so we were going to try to go back to low-key.

Day 9: Accident first thing in the morning. Finally I decided to try something different: BRIBERY! I broke out the Chocolate Skippers (peanut/treenut-free m&ms) and told him if he peed in the potty, he'd get a Chocolate Skipper. ZERO ACCIDENTS AFTER THAT!!!

It's been over 2 weeks since that day and we have had zero accidents. He RARELY goes at daycare and just holds it all day, but then when he gets home, he runs to the potty and pees himself and earns himself a Chocolate Skipper. He still wears a diaper for naps and bedtime, though he rarely pees in his nap diaper. He's apparently a camel who doesn't pee much.

Our only issue now is poop - he's pooped on the potty once and found it pretty traumatizing, so now he poops in his nap or nighttime diaper, but we're not pushing that issue for now.

Really only you know your kid. It helped me to remember that it's going to get messy before it gets better.

We loosely followed the oh crap book.

One of the biggest things for me is to remember that it's my job to set up success. We have been out of diapers for over 6 months and I still need to do a lot of reminding to go potty. But if I do that then he is fine.

I'm all about the gradual approach, we never did any kind of forced potty training. From like, 20 months to 3.25ish, lo1 just used the potty occasionally if she wanted to. she knew when she was going, like would say "I'm going to poop now!" but then would choose NOT to use the potty, like, "no I want to go under the table" lol. Forcing no diapers was just a control battle that seemed useless; occasionally we would try to bribe her or just take them away, but it just made her refuse to use the potty more strongly. I talked to her daycare teachers a lot about it (they have MAs in child development) and they were like "yeah physically she's ready but she's not emotionally." Around 3y3m or so she just decided that undies were cool, lol. We didn't do anything particularly different, she just was finally ready. She still wears pull ups at night and for naps, and I think sometimes now she just waits to pee until she has one on to go (though she always poops on the potty now), but she'll get there all the way eventually (she's 3y8m now). She has had very few accidents ever.