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Alterian
Jan 28, 2003

Depending on what flavors they are, you could use them as a sauce on noodles. If you have fruit ones, you could spread them on a waffle.

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frenchnewwave
Jun 7, 2012

Would you like a Cuppa?

Alterian posted:

Depending on what flavors they are, you could use them as a sauce on noodles. If you have fruit ones, you could spread them on a waffle.

Or what about mixing with yogurt and ice in a blender and making a smoothie? Depending on the flavors.

Sockmuppet
Aug 15, 2009
Our kid suddenly refused to be spoonfed, and she's not yet able to spoonfeed herself (forkfeeding herself, on the other hand, is no problem, since the content of the fork stays put no matter which way the fork is held), but she loves straws, so I stuck one in a jar of fruit puree and she hovered it up, and thats how she eats it now. Worth a shot if your kid likes straws :)

Twatty Seahag
Dec 30, 2007
Late to age-chat but I have a 5-day-old and a 3.5-year-old and SHE HELPS. I'm so excited. She helps me get diapers and brings me stuff when I'm nursing, and best of all she LOVES it.

Papercut
Aug 24, 2005

Twatty Seahag posted:

Late to age-chat but I have a 5-day-old and a 3.5-year-old and SHE HELPS. I'm so excited. She helps me get diapers and brings me stuff when I'm nursing, and best of all she LOVES it.

This is probably the age gap we'll end up with. We have a 19-month-old and getting pregnant again is the last thing we would want to do right now. The thought of having an infant on top of this little monkey sounds like a nightmare.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?

flashy_mcflash posted:

Was poop different than pee in this respect? Because Sydney gives no fucks about popping a squat and making GBS threads on the carpet if given the opportunity.

It wasn't for mine. Someone posted after me and said doing the same thing but with underwear worked for her (his?) kids. Do whatever works best for yours, of course.

Edit: auto-complete hates parentheses.

Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jul 7, 2014

Chandrika
Aug 23, 2007
My daughter will be 6 soon, and my partner and I are just now considering having a second child. I've always wanted more, but he is doing his PhD, and we agreed to wait for another until he finished. Well, he's finishing up in a couple of weeks, and suddenly I'm starting to get a little worried. I sleep through the night and have conversations with my daughter. I'm finding time to exercise and wear mascara again now, and I've been diagnosed with a genetic disorder which doesn't exactly interfere with pregnancy or childbirth, but could make it substantially more painful on my joints. My last labour was 34 hours long, I had an absolute nightmare of a time breastfeeding, and I healed wrong and had to have surgery 7 months postpartum. Altogether I wasn't myself again until she was at least two. I would do it all again to have my daughter, and I know I would feel the same way about future kids, but I'm still concerned. And, twins run in the family on both sides, and I've been dreaming about twins a lot when I'm waking up. Yikes. Anyways, I'm hoping to sort it out soon and make a decision one way or the other. I still want another but it would be naive to think that I won't have problems this time too. On the positive side, six, almost seven, is a great age to be helpful with a new baby, and I think my daughter would be a lovely sister.

Did any of you have a large gap and then more kids? How did that go for you?

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

Chandrika posted:

My daughter will be 6 soon, and my partner and I are just now considering having a second child. I've always wanted more, but he is doing his PhD, and we agreed to wait for another until he finished. Well, he's finishing up in a couple of weeks, and suddenly I'm starting to get a little worried. I sleep through the night and have conversations with my daughter. I'm finding time to exercise and wear mascara again now, and I've been diagnosed with a genetic disorder which doesn't exactly interfere with pregnancy or childbirth, but could make it substantially more painful on my joints. My last labour was 34 hours long, I had an absolute nightmare of a time breastfeeding, and I healed wrong and had to have surgery 7 months postpartum. Altogether I wasn't myself again until she was at least two. I would do it all again to have my daughter, and I know I would feel the same way about future kids, but I'm still concerned. And, twins run in the family on both sides, and I've been dreaming about twins a lot when I'm waking up. Yikes. Anyways, I'm hoping to sort it out soon and make a decision one way or the other. I still want another but it would be naive to think that I won't have problems this time too. On the positive side, six, almost seven, is a great age to be helpful with a new baby, and I think my daughter would be a lovely sister.

Did any of you have a large gap and then more kids? How did that go for you?
I am in your situation (except I'm the male), and after some deliberation, we will either adopt or not have more kids. It's the part you refer to as "not yourself again until she was at least two" that is a deal breaker for me. Frankly, I think my wife would do it again, but I can't spend another two years of my life like that.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...
Yeah, I would say adopt in your case as well. If you're not sure that you want another kid, do not have another kid.

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

Ynglaur posted:

It wasn't for mine. Someone posted after me and said doing the same thing but with underwear worked for her (his?) kids. Do whatever works best for yours, of course.

Edit: auto-complete hates parentheses.

Yeah that was me. We kept the undies on so they'd have to deal directly with the consequences of a decision not to use the washroom.

hepscat
Jan 16, 2005

Avenging Nun
We have an 8.5 year gap and that later pregnancy did take a physical toll, as well as the months with no sleep. But we got through it, and for me the best part is that it's been a great experience for my older daughter. It has had a big impact on her personality (younger is 5 now) - not that only children all need siblings, but she found out how much she likes kids and has found volunteer projects with kids that I doubt she would have done if she hadn't figured out babies and young kids can be fun. Overall I wouldn't change a thing about it, although it is weird to have one kid starting high school next year while the other is starting kindergarten.

greatn
Nov 15, 2006

by Lowtax
Couldn't you get a caesarian? Not that that doesn't take a toll as well, but you won't be loving up your pelvis or hips. And if you can't breastfeed, formula is probably nearly just as good according to some new surveys that accounted for behavioral factors and income.

Amykinz
May 6, 2007

greatn posted:

Couldn't you get a caesarian? Not that that doesn't take a toll as well, but you won't be loving up your pelvis or hips.

I'm currently pregnant with my second and my hips/pelvis are already hosed up just from the pregnancy. Not all the "returning to normal" is from the birth, a good deal of it is from the effects of the pregnancy too.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

Papercut posted:

This is probably the age gap we'll end up with. We have a 19-month-old and getting pregnant again is the last thing we would want to do right now. The thought of having an infant on top of this little monkey sounds like a nightmare.

They're tricky like that. My wife became pregnant with the second kid when the first was about 13 months old. He was fairly easy to control then. Now at 2.5 years, not so much. If we had waited another 6 months, we might have waited another 6 years at that point. Good thing is younger brother is probably going to be his size eventually, able to hold his own in their nightly wrestling contests.

AlistairCookie
Apr 1, 2010

I am a Dinosaur
My kids are just shy of 3 years apart. We started trying when Tim was about to turn two, and I got pregnant right away (which was shocking and a bit novel, considering how how much of a struggle having Tim was.) We only wanted two, and at first were going to have them much farther apart. But time started passing and we realized that with the birth of a new baby it's like pressing "reset" on your family life. All the things you've moved past as your child has grown, you're right back to doing with the birth of another. Anything you were putting off until your child got older, you're back to putting off because you have an infant-->toddler again. Also, my work. The longer we waited, the longer until I was going to be back to FT employment (for us, everyone's different of course.) A two year gap was a bit too close for me, because at two they're still pretty needy and can be such a handful. So we were shooting for three years (remember they take 9 months to get here).

Fast forward and now they're three and six. They love each other, they hate each other, they're playing like little pals, they're hitting each other with plastic bats. They wrestle, they're loud, they plot and scheme together. We're close to being done with pullups (by the fall, I'm hoping we can get the poop thing resolved), and I feel we're moved on from all things "baby". Now they're both old enough we feel that they can enjoy a small trip, and we're talking about taking a proper family vacation. (To the Field Museum in Chicago to see the dinosaur bones, and to Shed's to see the fish. :) ) It's something we didn't want to do towing a toddler. I'm glad we didn't wait much longer, because I'm not sure how much of gap would be too much for them to be playmates now.

Spacing kids is also something we can only control up to a point. Sometimes you get pregnant right away, sometimes not.

flashy_mcflash
Feb 7, 2011

Ynglaur posted:

It wasn't for mine. Someone posted after me and said doing the same thing but with underwear worked for her (his?) kids. Do whatever works best for yours, of course.

Edit: auto-complete hates parentheses.

Kalenn Istarion posted:

Yeah that was me. We kept the undies on so they'd have to deal directly with the consequences of a decision not to use the washroom.

Thanks! Kalenn, is there some special kind of underwear they recommend for this, or just whatever they'll end up wearing?

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

flashy_mcflash posted:

Thanks! Kalenn, is there some special kind of underwear they recommend for this, or just whatever they'll end up wearing?

Nope, normal ones. Key is that they feel the wet / dirty bum. Even 'stay wet' pull-ups didn't seem to give him the sensation, but in undies he almost immediately started using the toilet.

FordCQC
Dec 23, 2007

THAT'S MAMA OYRX TO YOU GUARDIAN
It was stumbled onto while looking through SpaceBattles for stuff to post in the Weird Fanart thread.
*Pat voice* Perfect
Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early?

We recently transitioned our daughter into a regular bed and she sleeps in it great, but she's woken up at 5:45 AM for the past 3-4 days and it's seriously messing us up not getting that last hour of sleep we were used to previously. I don't mind if she's awake as long as she isn't banging on our door to wake us (and the baby) up. What's worked for you?

Slo-Tek
Jun 8, 2001

WINDOWS 98 BEAT HIS FRIEND WITH A SHOVEL

FordCQC posted:

Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early?

We recently transitioned our daughter into a regular bed and she sleeps in it great, but she's woken up at 5:45 AM for the past 3-4 days and it's seriously messing us up not getting that last hour of sleep we were used to previously. I don't mind if she's awake as long as she isn't banging on our door to wake us (and the baby) up. What's worked for you?

A 3 year old can be relied on to feed themselves. Maybe give her a shelf of breakfast food she is allowed to have and say "if you get up before mom and dad, you are allowed to get breakfast from your shelf, and play with toys from your bin"

Even with a 6 and 9 year old, we have "do-not-disturb/get your breakfast and go downstairs...quietly!' signs for the bedroom door on weekends.

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

FordCQC posted:

Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early?
I put the TV on PBS before I go to bed, and when she wakes up, she toddles out to the livingroom and watches... whatever Obama is forcefeeding her from government television.

That's because I got tired of vacuuming ground up cheerios out of the carpet, but if you judge the boob-tube to be more dangerous than dirty carpet, there is also Slo-Tek's advice.

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

FordCQC posted:

Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early?

We recently transitioned our daughter into a regular bed and she sleeps in it great, but she's woken up at 5:45 AM for the past 3-4 days and it's seriously messing us up not getting that last hour of sleep we were used to previously. I don't mind if she's awake as long as she isn't banging on our door to wake us (and the baby) up. What's worked for you?

We leave a selection of books in our older guy's room and he is told that he is to stay there reading until one of us comes to get him (or he needs to go pee). That worked from around 2.5. Now that he's older he also has the option to go eat some breakfast stuff similar to Slo-Tek's suggestion.

Amykinz
May 6, 2007

FordCQC posted:

Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early?

We recently transitioned our daughter into a regular bed and she sleeps in it great, but she's woken up at 5:45 AM for the past 3-4 days and it's seriously messing us up not getting that last hour of sleep we were used to previously. I don't mind if she's awake as long as she isn't banging on our door to wake us (and the baby) up. What's worked for you?

They make very simple 'kid' alarm clocks that have a big moon and a big sun. You sould set it for 7am or whenever and teach her to stay in her room until the 'sun' comes up? My kid can open the fridge but not reach anything, so having her get her own breakfast would include her opening the fridge for milk but just leaving it if she couldn't get anything, so quiet time is our plan. Right now she comes in and goes back to sleep.

Fionnoula
May 27, 2010

Ow, quit.

flashy_mcflash posted:

Thanks! Kalenn, is there some special kind of underwear they recommend for this, or just whatever they'll end up wearing?

My son has special needs, we did potty training with his behavioral therapist. I quickly found that my son thought "pull=ups=diaper, make zero effort to get to toilet", so I went to 100% underwear within a day of starting. His BCBA (behavioral therapist) recommended from the outset that we not do naked or pantsless potty training, because of the worry that he would learn to go to the toilet when naked, but then have to retrain when pants were introduced into the equation. Which I totally understand, as it was obvious to me that his pull-ups/diapers vs. underwear behaviors were totally different, so I could easily see where he would think naked vs. underwear is also totally different. This is likely not a huge deal with a typically developed child, but it takes my son a bit more time to acquire new skills, so I wanted to avoid adding any extra steps for him to learn - from the outset he learned that the process of going to the bathroom involves pulling pants and underwear down and then back up again.

If you're worried about messes all over your house, you can go for cloth training pants as underwear (basically they'll keep the pee in and the kid will definitely feel the wetness, while saving your furniture and carpets). I used a combination of regular boxer briefs and Best Bottoms Training pants for him and it worked wonderfully, mostly I did boxer briefs at home and cloth training pants when we went out because I didn't want to have to clean pee out of the carseat or set him up for public embarrassment (he potty trained late due to his disability). For the first weekend I also put chux pads on the couch to protect it as well as I could, because I had boxes and boxes of them sent to me by our insurance company as part of his medical supplies. (They're sold in medical supply stores or pet stores too as puppy pee pads).

DingoTea
Nov 8, 2010

:haw:

Fionnoula posted:

My son has special needs, we did potty training with his behavioral therapist. I quickly found that my son thought "pull=ups=diaper, make zero effort to get to toilet", so I went to 100% underwear within a day of starting. His BCBA (behavioral therapist) recommended from the outset that we not do naked or pantsless potty training, because of the worry that he would learn to go to the toilet when naked, but then have to retrain when pants were introduced into the equation. Which I totally understand, as it was obvious to me that his pull-ups/diapers vs. underwear behaviors were totally different, so I could easily see where he would think naked vs. underwear is also totally different. This is likely not a huge deal with a typically developed child, but it takes my son a bit more time to acquire new skills, so I wanted to avoid adding any extra steps for him to learn - from the outset he learned that the process of going to the bathroom involves pulling pants and underwear down and then back up again.

If you're worried about messes all over your house, you can go for cloth training pants as underwear (basically they'll keep the pee in and the kid will definitely feel the wetness, while saving your furniture and carpets). I used a combination of regular boxer briefs and Best Bottoms Training pants for him and it worked wonderfully, mostly I did boxer briefs at home and cloth training pants when we went out because I didn't want to have to clean pee out of the carseat or set him up for public embarrassment (he potty trained late due to his disability). For the first weekend I also put chux pads on the couch to protect it as well as I could, because I had boxes and boxes of them sent to me by our insurance company as part of his medical supplies. (They're sold in medical supply stores or pet stores too as puppy pee pads).

Thank you for posting this! Our 19 month old son has Down Syndrome, and I'm already looking into the future about how we're going to potty train him. I don't see Pull-Ups being a viable option, and I can imagine the results of pantsless potty training (ugggh the carpet). Did you get him to use THE toilet, or did he utilize one of those small kiddie toilets?

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

FordCQC posted:

Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early?

We recently transitioned our daughter into a regular bed and she sleeps in it great, but she's woken up at 5:45 AM for the past 3-4 days and it's seriously messing us up not getting that last hour of sleep we were used to previously. I don't mind if she's awake as long as she isn't banging on our door to wake us (and the baby) up. What's worked for you?

Once we had to take the rails off of our kid's crib and turn it into the toddler bed, she realized that there was nothing stopping her from just waltzing into our room and waking us up because she was bored, needy, whatever. We ended up putting a child gate on the door to her room, a portable one that you can put up and take down. That not only stopped her from coming in to bug us, but actually helped stop her from waking up in the middle of the night too, and helped IMMENSELY with bedtime. Now, when she wakes up in the morning, she'll open up her door and quietly wait at the gate for one of us to come pick her up and start the day.

Ours is waking up way too early for us too, but that's more a function of the fact that it's summer and the days are longer than anything else. At least the gate means that this all happens on your terms, not hers. Additionally, she had been waking up in the middle of the night because she was afraid that one of us was going to go away, and so one of us would have to go in there and stay with her. Now that she's more or less over that, she's sleeping in until 6:30 instead of 5:30, which is nice.

Fionnoula
May 27, 2010

Ow, quit.

DingoTea posted:

Thank you for posting this! Our 19 month old son has Down Syndrome, and I'm already looking into the future about how we're going to potty train him. I don't see Pull-Ups being a viable option, and I can imagine the results of pantsless potty training (ugggh the carpet). Did you get him to use THE toilet, or did he utilize one of those small kiddie toilets?

We started with a little kiddie potty but I got tired of cleaning it REALLY QUICKLY (like, within a few days I was over it) so I bought one of these toilet seats and just used the stepstool we already had in the bathroom so his feet weren't dangling. I also learned really quickly that when we were out and ended up with one of those industrial toilet seats with the gap in the front to have him sit sideways.

My son has Williams Syndrome, also a genetic mutation like DS. We used the social story "My Going Potty Story" from this site both at home and at school to provide him with consistency (social stories are great for more than just autism). We gave him a script, so every single time we decided it was potty time (we started at every 10 minutes and worked our way up from there), we would say "POTTY PLEASE" and eventually he started saying it as well, which gave him a script to follow when he was ready to start requesting rather than going on a schedule. Then we'd get into the bathroom, sit him on the toilet and read the story. We followed the steps in the story exactly every single time whether he successfully eliminated or not. I think it really helped to have a consistent script and story that everyone everywhere followed, so he knew what was coming and what words were going to be said and he was comfortable with it.

Sockmuppet
Aug 15, 2009

Volmarias posted:

Ours is waking up way too early for us too, but that's more a function of the fact that it's summer and the days are longer than anything else.

I'd just like to take a moment to lament the otherwise gorgeous and delightful Midnight sun. I grew up here (north of Norway), and have no problems sleeping in a world where the sun never sets and no curtain is quite enough to keep the light out, but my husband and my poor daughter were born down south, and now we're here on holiday visiting my parents, and the never ending daylight is messing up their sleep completely, which obviously messes up my sleep. I need another holiday after this holiday :(

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
People say that having kids is the best, but it is in fact the worst - at least when it comes to vacations. Leaving the house for more than one night is always an exercise in exhaustion and frustration. Oh, how I can't wait to go on something like a Disney cruise where I can drop the twins off with a 20 year old in a princess costume so that I can get down to the business of drinking overpriced cocktails!

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

People say that having kids is the best, but it is in fact the worst - at least when it comes to vacations. Leaving the house for more than one night is always an exercise in exhaustion and frustration. Oh, how I can't wait to go on something like a Disney cruise where I can drop the twins off with a 20 year old in a princess costume so that I can get down to the business of drinking overpriced cocktails!

What kinds of vacations do you try to do? We travel lots with our kids and while there are some headaches with packing and such it's overall pretty rewarding.

E: basically this vvvvvv

Kalenn Istarion fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 9, 2014

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

I've got the opposite experience... maybe because I'm not into drinking or partying anymore. I like seeing the kids learn and experience new things. They have a blast.

Mine are 4 and 2 1/2, and we go on quite a few trips to see family, and a couple of vacations a year. Usually 1 week long beach trip, and then another long-weekend kind of getaway. The kids are better behaved on trips than at home to be honest. Car rides are non issue with DVD players and iPad's... My wife is a drat professional at packing for trips by now, and the biggest thing is keeping the kids somewhat on their routine... You have to keep naptime in play... you can't skip naptime and then not expect your kid to go nuclear at 7PM when you go out to dinner.

flashy_mcflash
Feb 7, 2011

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

People say that having kids is the best, but it is in fact the worst - at least when it comes to vacations. Leaving the house for more than one night is always an exercise in exhaustion and frustration. Oh, how I can't wait to go on something like a Disney cruise where I can drop the twins off with a 20 year old in a princess costume so that I can get down to the business of drinking overpriced cocktails!

All I can suggest to you is to keep trying. We take Sydney out all. the. time. starting from when she was a week old and while we've had the very occasional nightmare experience (and even then it wasn't so bad) I think we'd have killed each other or ourselves if we didn't force ourselves to keep doing it.

I think that dealing with kids outside of the house has a lot to do with being prepared and knowing when to extract yourself. Vacation-wise, where have you tried and had no success? Sydney was only a year when we went to Aruba a few months ago but that was an amazing experience and she had a blast. All-inclusives (and cruises I guess, though they're not for me) are great if only because of the food, since there's always new stuff for the kids to try and it's no biggie if they don't like it. That's where I found out that Sydney goes buckwild for sushi, especially eel. Who knew?

Fionnoula posted:

My son has special needs, we did potty training with his behavioral therapist. I quickly found that my son thought "pull=ups=diaper, make zero effort to get to toilet", so I went to 100% underwear within a day of starting. His BCBA (behavioral therapist) recommended from the outset that we not do naked or pantsless potty training, because of the worry that he would learn to go to the toilet when naked, but then have to retrain when pants were introduced into the equation. Which I totally understand, as it was obvious to me that his pull-ups/diapers vs. underwear behaviors were totally different, so I could easily see where he would think naked vs. underwear is also totally different. This is likely not a huge deal with a typically developed child, but it takes my son a bit more time to acquire new skills, so I wanted to avoid adding any extra steps for him to learn - from the outset he learned that the process of going to the bathroom involves pulling pants and underwear down and then back up again.

If you're worried about messes all over your house, you can go for cloth training pants as underwear (basically they'll keep the pee in and the kid will definitely feel the wetness, while saving your furniture and carpets). I used a combination of regular boxer briefs and Best Bottoms Training pants for him and it worked wonderfully, mostly I did boxer briefs at home and cloth training pants when we went out because I didn't want to have to clean pee out of the carseat or set him up for public embarrassment (he potty trained late due to his disability). For the first weekend I also put chux pads on the couch to protect it as well as I could, because I had boxes and boxes of them sent to me by our insurance company as part of his medical supplies. (They're sold in medical supply stores or pet stores too as puppy pee pads).

Thanks for this info! Are the cloth training pants similar to cloth diapers or closer to underwear? We're currently using cloth (part of the motivation was that supposedly it's easier to potty-train out of those since they're closer to underwear than disposables but I'm skeptical of that) but will definitely keep this stuff in mind when it comes time.

frenchnewwave
Jun 7, 2012

Would you like a Cuppa?
How did you all know that your kid was ready for potty training? My 19 month old is clearly not ready but a bunch of other people's kids around the same age are already starting.

VorpalBunny
May 1, 2009

Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog
We just wrapped up a weeklong, multi-city roadtrip around California with two toddlers and an infant. I was expecting the worst, but except for some sleep issues (with my 18-month old, who didn't want to sleep in the pack n play but is nightmare to bedshare with) it worked out much better than I expected. I was just very realistic about what situations we all could handle, making sure naps happened either in a bed or in their carseats, and packed 3x as many clothes as I thought I might need, because we had little access to laundry facilities.

As for potty training, our 3 1/2 year old understands he can't go to preschool until he is potty trained, says he doesn't want to wear diapers, and can go for short dog walks in underpants without wetting himself. But if we put him in underpants for an extended period of time he seems to go out of his way to wet himself and then not tell us until we notice his socks are all wet. His verbal skills are there, he knows if he does it he gets the "reward" of school but his actual ability to do it isn't there yet. And I'm not rushing him, since potty training isn't a race or anything. I had visions of maybe starting earlier this summer, but then we had that roadtrip and the last thing I wanted to have to do was stop every 20 minutes for him to piss in a tiny toilet on the side of some mountain road. Maybe next month.

jassi007
Aug 9, 2006

mmmmm.. burger...

frenchnewwave posted:

How did you all know that your kid was ready for potty training? My 19 month old is clearly not ready but a bunch of other people's kids around the same age are already starting.

We started both our boys at 6 months. At first you just sit them on it, praise them if they happen to go. Try to anticipate their potties, if they go right before or after breakfast etc. Just keep at it. I think one of the biggest hurdles is not starting until the kids are conscious of it, then they resist. If its just something they do by the time by the time they really think about it, they don't resist as much. We then introduced rewards, a treat after a potty to power through the phase where they began to resist (18ish months?) Eventually he just got past needed a reward and just does it. By 24 months he was I think done with rewards, and now we're at 34 months and he hasn't had an accident in at least 3 months if not longer.

Papercut
Aug 24, 2005

jassi007 posted:

We started both our boys at 6 months. At first you just sit them on it, praise them if they happen to go. Try to anticipate their potties, if they go right before or after breakfast etc. Just keep at it. I think one of the biggest hurdles is not starting until the kids are conscious of it, then they resist. If its just something they do by the time by the time they really think about it, they don't resist as much. We then introduced rewards, a treat after a potty to power through the phase where they began to resist (18ish months?) Eventually he just got past needed a reward and just does it. By 24 months he was I think done with rewards, and now we're at 34 months and he hasn't had an accident in at least 3 months if not longer.

What do you do if your 6-month-old screams bloody murder just from being sat on the potty, and after a few tries starts screaming just at the sight of it? I hope the answer is "give up until they're older", because that's what I did.

FishBulb
Mar 29, 2003

Marge, I'd like to be alone with the sandwich for a moment.

Are you going to eat it?

...yes...
Seems like the right call

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

frenchnewwave posted:

How did you all know that your kid was ready for potty training? My 19 month old is clearly not ready but a bunch of other people's kids around the same age are already starting.
Sometime between age 2 and 3, they will realize they can control their potty, it'll be apparent (not obvious, but if you're watching, you'll know), then you just show them where to go and potty training will be done.

Or you can start at 18 months and have a year of sprinting for the bathroom and anguish.

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

frenchnewwave posted:

How did you all know that your kid was ready for potty training? My 19 month old is clearly not ready but a bunch of other people's kids around the same age are already starting.

We just kept trying on and off until it took. Also 'soft selling' the main ideas on a daily basis until he started copying them. Then the undies thing I mentioned above when we figured out that he would deliberately hold it until he got the diapers on.

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

Papercut posted:

What do you do if your 6-month-old screams bloody murder just from being sat on the potty, and after a few tries starts screaming just at the sight of it? I hope the answer is "give up until they're older", because that's what I did.

:downs::respek::downs:

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Papercut
Aug 24, 2005
My minor triumph is that the now 19-month-old says "bye bye poo poo" every time he hears a toilet flush. Also he can identify when he has a poopy diaper with about 50-75% accuracy.

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