Almost all children can learn to be clean and dry. Children with special needs such as delayed speech, autism or a physical disability may find the process more challenging. Keep the potty around, and talk about wee and poo when you're changing nappies. Helping your child to learn through play Give your child plenty of encouragement and praise their efforts. When your child uses the potty or manages to stay dry, even if it's just for a short time, tell them how pleased you are.

Just like when helping them to walk and talk, you can start teaching your child to use a potty before they stop using nappies. This gives them all the time and practice they need to succeed with being independent from nappies when the time comes. Learning how to use the potty independently and stopping wearing nappies is a big milestone for your child. There are lots of new and exciting skills for them to learn with your help. Once you've helped to grow your child's body awareness and they begin to develop confidence in what they've learnt, you can then start to build in and give opportunities to practice some more advanced skills. These include: For most children, encouraging and supporting them to be as independent as possible is the best way to motivate them.Talking about wee and poo when you change them and letting them see you use the toilet gives your child the message that it's a normal part of life and nothing to be afraid of. Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user. To make this process easier for you both, follow our evidence-based 3 step Let's Go Potty approach. Some children may prefer to go straight to using the toilet. If this is your child, get a children’s toilet seat and a step stool to help them to feel secure and relaxed. Having feet firmly on the floor or a stool is the ideal position for fully emptying the bladder and bowel. Try to avoid prompting or asking your child too often. Instead, wait until you think they need to go and then direct them gently, e.g. “it’s toilet time” or “let’s get that wee/poo in the potty!”

It begins with preparation to use the potty, next is practising potty skills before eventually stopping using nappiesas your child gains confidence. That's where devices like this option from pStyle come in. Marketed as "portable urinals," they're funnels that can be used without pulling down your pants all the way — you just have to unzip and place them inside the fly. As long as the end of the funnel is outside your clothing and pointed downward, you'll be good to go. Just before nap time, help your child use the potty or toilet, so they are more likely to stay dry. Taking your time leading your child through the preparation and practice stages should help to avoid the most common potty training problems. Before they can start training, your child needs to be given lots of opportunities for learning. Babies are born ready to learn new skills with our help and the best way for them to do so is through practice and repetition.

Common potty training problems

Make sure they are having plenty of water-based drinks on top of any milk. Keeping their bladder and bowel healthy and working properly will help with potty training. Your habits: Are you a homebody family or one constantly on the go? Do you take road trips or other journeys where it’s tough to find a bathroom right away? Do you spend days out in places without ready bathroom access?

In addition to your portable toilet, you may want some portable toilet accessories to make the whole experience a bit more comfortable. It is normal to have lots of accidents at the beginning and they are an important part of the learning process. This is a big step for your child, so be patient and encourage them.Constipation affects 1 in 3 children and is especially common in under 5s. Your child may be struggling because they have some underlying constipation that was there before you started potty training.

Try to change nappies or pull-ups as soon as they are wet or soiled. This teaches your baby that it is normal to be clean and dry. The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application.There are 40 different skills your baby needs to learn and put together to become potty trained. You don’t need to wait for them to be able to do all these skills on their own before you start helping prepare them. Urination devices: These are pee funnels for people with vulvas — i.e. people who can't easily pee in a bottle or on the side of the road without taking their pants off. Funnels make the task a bit easier: The wide end goes over the vulva, creating a tight seal and funneling urine through the device and out the spout.