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I introduced the potty months before we started. For about 6 months he'd pee in the potty when he woke up and before bed. Probably about 90% of his poops too. Then once spring came we did the boot camp method. It worked really well because he totally understood the concept. I just broke the laziness

We did 3 days of in-house training and day 4-5 outside the house but in the yard or nearby park. That was March. Tons of accidents and no self-iniation. OCPT style generally. I think it was a good start and "push."

From there on it was undies at home, pull-ups when out, and potty every 2 hours or transition times. He was great at peeing on command, not so great at telling is when he had to go. He was 50/50 on poop and we learned his signs and timing.

After about 4 months of this transition, he is now in daytime undies fulltime finally unless it's a long car ride. He has started to tell us when he has to go and it's great.

@Foodnerd81: 26 months when starting, he is 31 months (2.5y) now.

Gradual/child-led hands down. I wrote a post about this but letting DD1 take the lead was life transforming! We never had to potty train/bribe/lock ourselves at home/clean up anything. Once she was ready, she never had an accident. Currently we're also letting night training happen naturally.

We tried a few times but never pushed hard if they weren’t interested. It just became a battle. So they were older when it finally clicked (3 years 2 months and 3.5 years). But when it did, there was only 1-2 accidents the first day and that was it. They were also night trained from day one. It was super easy since they were older. Physically they were ready way before but mentally it had to be their choice.

Such a timely post! We are planning to do a loose version of the Oh Crap method over the upcoming holiday weekend. We introduced the potty months ago and DS would sit on it before his bath and occasionally at school but became pretty resistant to it so we stopped pushing it. We talk about going potty and he is familiar but shows no interest.

He is 37 months and I feel like a big push might be the thing he needs for it to click so going commando Friday morning and picked up big boy undies with all his favorite characters. We'll see how it goes over the weekend and adjust as needed.

I voted "in between." We started with gradual - he peed on the potty every night before bed (and often other times at his request) for a good 8+ months before we trained. (We knew we wouldn't train him before ~3 unless he was showing major signs or asked directly.) Then we did more of an intensive 2 days to start things off for real, but definitely not OCPT.

To be honest I find OCPT to be pretty rigid and counter to lots of psychological research on conditioning, recommendations from pediatricians, and the like. I haven't read the book but my impression from lots of interpretations/blogs and the like is that it's much more of a one-size-fits-all approach and some "know your kid" can be lost in those details. DS refused the bottomless approach but was super motivated by wearing character underwear, a sticker chart of sorts, and hot wheels cars. The reward phase was short-lived but training definitely would have been more challenging without it, and he's not still holding us hostage for dinosaur stickers. I'm also skeptical of the very early training - there's at least one large-scale scientific study that shows early training (defined as <27 months) is associated with training taking longer (see here: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/4/810).

What worked for one kid didn’t work for the other. Depends on the child. Have to work with their personality.

So appreciating these posts on potty training as I REALLY need to get DS out of his diapers, he is 2.5 and showing he's ready (but only thanks to day care, see more on that below).

With DD, we did a more gradual approach at 2.5 as she was very resistant to going anywhere near the potty. We tried everything, yet weren't committed enough to do it boot camp style (everyone including my ped swears it's much quicker overall if you try boot camp). It was a long and difficult process as we let her readiness determine how we approached it. She wet her undies SO. MANY. TIMES, yet with poop she mastered it right away. Even at four years old, every now and then she will wet her undies a little because she holds it in for so long and then it's too late, like when she's having fun or doesn't want to be bothered. Other times she's super proactive about going to the potty.

My son was also initially resistant to going to the potty. But he just started the school year and they help facilitate potty training which is great and even after the first day, he came home and ran to the potty (naked after a bath) and attempted using it, but of course completely missed the actual toilet bowl and got it everywhere (he was also holding his wee wee SO tight, I guess they taught him at school, I couldn't stop laughing). Our school asks parents to help with the training by taking them every 15 minutes at home but just the thought of that. I swear, I really hate potting training.

I did my son kinda split like some people have mentioned. At 20 months, I started sitting him on the potty to pee, so at 21 months, he knew to pee when put on the potty. At 26 months, we did OCPT (ish), and since he already knew the basics, he picked up self-initiation in a day. I imagine it would be much more stressful trying to teach how to use the potty at the same time as when to use it.