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My DD will be 3 in December and is barely interested in potty training. While I sometimes worry, I really try not to let it get me. I figure when she is ready it will happen but forcing it will just make it worse.

I think you're probably seeing a ton of people potty training now because of the popularity of the Oh Crap potty training book/program (which says most kids will never be "ready" by themselves, that one of the biggest parts of potty training is parental consistency, and that the ideal time to potty train is between 20 and 30 months.)

That being said, I think the comparison trap is so easy to fall into with parenting, and you just have to stop yourself from thinking that way. You probably didn't look down on other moms whose kids walked later than yours, for example, and I don't think moms who potty train earlier look down on moms who choose wait. Everyone does what's best for their family, and you're just doing what feels best for you!

We waited to potty train DS until he was just about 3 (started 2 weeks before his birthday). I was due with DD when he was 34 (?) months and I didn't want to deal with a potty training regression and a newborn in the house, and he didn't seem ready until maybe a month or two before she was born. I felt a little behind like you're saying, but in reality, most of his peers/our friends had already trained but they either had daycare/preschool deadlines or older kids (my son is an early Sept. birthday and the youngest in his class). The whole process went really well -- just one bad day (the first day!) -- and mostly painlessly. We didn't do the oh crap method, either, so I may just be biased in the direction of later training when the kid is ready.

I started feeling this way recently when I realized that the crop of babies that were born around when I had my LO (who is the oldest by 3 months) had all potty trained. To each their own but I do think a lot of people force it. I am not willing to do that but I did feel a little pressure knowing everyone else had trained so we have tried wearing undies the past couple weeks at home. She's not getting it, will pee in the potty and poop if we happen to catch her but will also just poop on the floor or in her undies if she has to go. So I don't think she is ready. We will probably stop with the undies for now and wait til I have a 3 day weekend or longer off work. We are expecting our 2nd right at her 3rd birthday so I had wanted to do it before then but we'll see what she's ready for!

Anyway, my longwinded response is I feel you, but I think that we gotta just not let peer pressure get to us and do what's right for our own child.

@catgirl: @LindsayInNY: Same. DD will be 3 in December and has pooped in the potty maybe twice, and pee only a handful of times, and mostly at school. I feel the same way, sometimes it seems like everyone else in the world are potty trained! I know she is smart, and physically ready (understand potty, can do it herself, etc) so I'm thinking it's purely emotional at this point. I've stopped even over-encouraging because I sense that she doesn't even like that. So I just ask her here & there super casually and keep on ordering pull up's.....

@LindsayInNY: My daughter is May 2015 and you're light years ahead of us, so it's all relative She finally started sitting on the potty about a month ago, after months of refusal, but has still never actually peed in it. She tells me "I'm not letting the pee out now. Maybe in a few weeks." And this is with an older brother who she copies in every area of life except this one sitting there encouraging her! No advice other than if I've learned anything about little girls thus far, or at least my own stubborn little girl, it's that they will not do anything until they're ready, as frustrating as it might be!

We potty trained at 34 months and it was the easiest thing ever. Maybe 3 accidents, no fights... she's just over 3 now and still often poops in her pull up at bedtime but I'm okay with that. I think if you wait long enough it can be a very stress free experience. The stay at home moms in my area all seemed to potty train around 3. I think in a day care setting it might be easier earlier.

So here are my thoughts and experiences with potty training: IRL and online are very different. On here and other places it seems like the majority potty train very young, where IRL the majority of parents/kids I know didn’t potty training until at least like 3.5 and often 4 years old. My LO’s pre-K room (which was all 4 year olds) had more than 1 kid who wasn’t full potty trained at the start of the year. I dunno, honestly there seems to be this (weird) competition around early potty-training, which I just don’t get.

I have also noticed sooooooooooooooo many parents who are like “we potty trained my almost 2 year old and it only took 8 months to pee train!” If it takes that long, I have a hard time saying that was successful “potty training”; that’s just subjecting yourself to torture for months on end for no reason.

It’s hard to judge “potty interest” signals too, I think. I think a lot of times we as parents forget that our kids are interested in EVERYTHING that we do – which includes the potty. Why are we going into the other room? Why is the door closed? What are we doing in there? Kids want to emulate. That’s totally normal but doesn’t necessarily mean they are really ready.

All to say: don't worry about it. Every kid is different. They all get there in the end.

I felt a lot of pressure to train dd1 before her little sister was born, at which point she was almost 2.5. SO many people told me to train her before because I wouldn’t want two in diapers. But I was so tired and grumpy being pregnant I knew I would do a terrible job training anyway plus didn’t want to deal with a newly potty trained kid and a newborn, so we waited. She sort of showed signs of readiness but almost never peed in the potty- like twice, and only once accidentally pooped in the potty. But I knew she would respond well to the 3 day method and I swear it took a day, when she was about 2 3/4 years. Had I just put her in pull-ups I think she would hav happily kept peeing in them.

So... each kid is different. I would try not to stress.

I was forced to potty train DS in August because his preschool required that kids be reliably potty trained by the start. He turns 3 in December. He NEVER showed any readiness signs - never wanted to use the potty at daycare, never cared to use the potty at home, etc. The first 3 days were the worst days of our lives (slight exaggeration) but he managed to be potty trained in 2 weeks without too much stress on him. DH was home with him over the summer so it was a lot easier to train him than if we were both working.

If it's not a big deal at daycare, i wouldn't really stress about your kid not being potty trained yet - she is still younger than the average potty trained age.

My friends kids are older (all born the year before, ranging from 7-13 months older then my son). Some were potty trained early (22 months ) but most closer to 2.5 or beyond. I felt some pressure (when a friend mentioned her nephew should be trained by now but he was only 2 months older then my son) but just ignored it.

My son was really ready a couple months before he turned 3 and it was so easy. He didn't want to poop at first and was dramatic. But it was easy. We just did an hour or so at a time to start. Naked on the bottom. M&ms for a pee. Eventually stretched it longer. Then started taking him out without a diaper. He rarely had accidents and he was truly ready. I don't know/care what my friends thought, tbh!

@Mrs. Champagne: I have a friend with kids the exact ages as mine and she trained a few months before the baby was born. Her daughter had tons of accident- probably normal, but just not anything I wanted to deal with. The kids were probably fully potty trained at around the same time even though she started months before.

Mine was April 2015, so 30 months now, and we really only just started training a week ago. I was waiting for her to show sincere interest. She's been super interested in the concept of the potty since around 18 months but it took until now for her to say definitively she wanted to start using it. I'm definitely in the camp that it's better to use less pressure (or none) and wait until the kid is ready to take those steps themselves. I'm kicking myself even now for the fact that DD said to me this morning "I'll go pee on the potty and that will make you happy" and then when no pee came out "Now you are sad or mad that I didn't pee." I really don't want her to think that our approval of her is attached to how she manages her bodily functions. Right now she loves her pull-ups and is peeing on the potty like six times a day at daycare so that's pretty good progress as far as I'm concerned.

I didn’t read all the responses so apologies if this is repetitive.
But I think for whatever reason the push to potty train has gotten earlier and earlier and now it’s like some weird badge of honor if your kid is fully potty trained by 2.
My son just turned 3 in Sept. We casually offered here and there and read books but I just didn’t care to push it. And my ped was 100% ok with this. She doesn’t “believe” in the 3-day method or forcing. She thinks that res very developmental and it’s extrmely normal for them to not be ready until 3.
AND my ped is much more “cold turkey” about a lot of things - sleep training, dropping feedings, transitioning to cups, getting rid of paci, etc. But potty training is literally the only thing she’s told me to relax about and not force.

Right when he turned 3 I became slightly more aggressive. Not fully 3-day method but if he woke up dry (which was almost every night for a couple months, oddly enough) I didn’t put a diaper on until he peed in the potty. And then it just snowballed from there to where he would actually ask to pee in the potty even if he was wearing a diaper. So that’s when I decided to go with underwear. He has had VERY FEW accidents and I really think it’s because we waited until he was older and able to understand (both our explanations and his own body).
He still doesn’t poop in the potty - also assured this was normal at his 3year well visit. She said “if he asks for a diaper to poop, give it to him. Don’t force him to go on the potty because it will stress him which could make him hold it which will make it harder and more painful, and then his association with poop and potty is pain and stress. No one asks when he’s 5 at what age he potty trained. It doesn’t go on a college application. He won’t be wearing diapers to kindergarten. Just relax and when he’s ready, one day he’ll say “I have to poop on the potty”.

I offer every time he says he has to poop. I do offer bribe of a big toy if he goes on the potty. If he says no I don’t push it. 1/5 Times he’ll say yes to sitting on the potty to try and poop but then he can’t/won’t and I say that’s ok and give him a diaper. FWIW he only poops once every other day so it’s not like me or school is changing multiple poop diapers. School never has! And I do one every other day. No big deal to me.

Anyway, all this to say I’ve been reassured that 1) potty training closer to 3 is normal and 2) poop happening after pee is normal. And neither are bad or something to worry about.

DS1 was potty trained at 2.5 and did really well. But he was ready and so was I. Honestly, wait until YOU (and DH) are ready to take on the challenge, since you’ll need to be consistent...and that can be exhausting!

It’s easier to leave your kid in diapers than try potty training them before they’re ready. I’d much rather change a diaper while we are out and about than change an entire wet (or worse!) outfit

Different kids are different and different parents have different priorities. Most kids probably can toilet train pretty young if their caregivers put enough work into it. But for some kids that is A LOT of work. Is it worth it?

We trained at 26 mos because we were cloth diapering, I was really sick of doing laundry, and we were pretty sure that the 3-day method/oh crap was going to be the way to go for our family.

We happened to have a chunk of time where daycare was closed and we were off work when LO was 26mos. Unless we were going to take time off work specifically for potty training, the next opportunity after that would be another 6-7 months and 70 loads of diaper laundry later.

He still has a pee accident 1-3x/week (3mos in). He probably would have been at 100% much faster if we waited to train later. But we are doing SO MUCH LESS LAUNDRY!

If we used disposables....yeah, potty training would have waited that additional 6-7mos.

Mine DS was born July 2015. We bought a potty a few months ago and introduced him to it but he has shown very little interest. At first he wouldn't even sit on it so I offered him a few M&M's to make it a fun thing instead of scary. Then I started just sitting him on it before his bath and he has peed a few times but doesn't seem to care. His daycare has started putting the kids on the potty at least 1x a day. I'm not going to push him and wait until he shows more interest but in the meantime we are talking more about it and reading books. I agree there seems to be a race among parents but this thread has reinforced that I am better off waiting for him to be ready rather than dragging out the entire process.