Problem with achieving bladder control of a 2-year-old

Hello everyone. I'm Josephine. A have a 2-year-old girl named Cielo. I am having a problem with the bladder control of my girl. I have always been instructing my little girl to ask me or her nanny to accompany her to the lu or sit in the potty whenever she feels like urinating. But, she keeps on wetting in her underwear. I don't allow her to wear nappies in the daytime since her skin gets easily irritated. She has control in her bowel elimination though, and she does asks her nanny when she wants to go to the lu to defecate. However, she does not informed us whenever she wants to pee, so that she could do it in a proper place and in a right manner. I would gladly welcome some tips or insights on how should I properly guide my 2-year-old toddler so she can achieved bladder control. Many thanks!

Hello Josephine,

Potty training is usually easy when the child is truly ready. It can actually be done in a day. I potty trained my first child in one day, but she had ever sign that she was truly ready to do this.

Often times a child will not be developmentally ready to use the lu until they are 2 1/2 or 3 years of age.

I just read an article that stated that parents are ready to potty train their children when they can devote up to 3 months of daily encouragement to this task and my immediate thought was... why devote up to 3 months of daily encouragement in this area when you really don't need to. Encouragement is important... always... but my biggest concern is that when you try to train your child before they are ready, you set yourself up for frustration and you set your child up for failure.

So... having said that, I would really encourage you to first determine whether you child is truly ready to potty train. It's great that she seems to know how to let you know when she needs to have a bowel movement on the lu. But being fully potty trained is something that comes when the child is ready. It's kind of like this. When you were eager for Cielo to learn to walk, you could encourage her and help her as much as possible, but until she had the strength in her legs, a sense of balancing on "2" instead of "4" and the motor skills to coordinate moving one foot in front of the other, she simply couldn't do it.

Potty training is much the same way. If you wait for Cielo to give you cues that she is ready to use the lu, then you'll be able to train her quickly, and there won't be accidents each day, there won't be frustration and she won't feel like she's failed... yet again.

Indications that a child is ready to be trained would include:

- An ability to stay dry for 2 hours or more
- Get to the potty, sit on it, and get off of it - all on her own (no help)
- Show an interest in using the potty (if she's not showing an interest in using it for urinating, she may not be ready)
- Control the muscles responsible for elimination. Sometimes you can ask the child to stop the urine flow while she is urinating and this will just be another indication as to whether is is ready or not... can she control those muscles?
- Expresses a need to go, verbally. Does she tell you when she needs to go?

For me, my biggest indicator was that my daughter could go 2 hours with a dry diaper, she was very verbal and understood directions well, and she showed an interest in using the lu. Plus she was now 3 years old, so the day after she turned 3, I decided that was the day to potty train her.

So I put up gates in the kitchen where there was only hard floors (easy to clean up an accident), I set up a little table with a chair for her to sit at, and I gave her things to do at the table for at least an hour (this included play dough, coloring books, manipulatives, etc.). I also had a bathroom right off of the kitchen that we could use, but if you don't have this, you can set up a little potty chair for easy access.

Once she had things to do (that would keep her at the table), I took her diaper off, so she just had a shirt on, and I started giving her drinks that she liked. Juice is something she really liked, but I may have also offered her root beer, once she was tired of the juice. The goal was to get her to drink as much as possible during that hour, so that we would have plenty of opportunities for her to feel like she needed to go to the lu.

The first time, she started to wet on her chair, and she made an indication that she was getting wet, so I quickly took her hand and said, "oh, let's go potty on the lu", and I took her to the lu and she climbed up and sat on there. Even though it had all gone on her chair, the point was that she now knew what she should do next time.

So down she got, and I dried her off, and cleaned up the mess on the chair and floor (again, easy to clean up because I had it contained in the kitchen) and she started playing again as I encouraged her to drink.

Now - I did not leave the kitchen during this entire "session". I encouraged her to drink, I did some food prep, and as soon as she started to go again, we would "run" to the bathroom. By the end of our little session, she was going to the lu without having an accident on her chair. She was definitely ready, and I avoided all the frustration and extra time cleaning up messes that I would have had if I had tried to train her before she was really ready.

I would encourage you to use a nappy rash cream on her bottom if you notice that she gets rashes easily, but if you change her every hour, she shouldn't break out in a rash. Disposable nappies can sometimes be wet without us knowing about it. Cloth nappies definitely can cause more of a rash problem in children because the acid in the urine is right up against the skin.

Also, you can help Cielo's urine to be less acidic by making sure she is getting lots of greens in her diet, and reducing her sugar intake and simple carbohydrate intake (i.e. cookies, crackers, biscuits, muffins, cakes, etc.).

Please post back if you need ideas on how to get more greens in her diet and let me know if you found this information helpful.

Warm Regards,

Kate

Hi Kate! I'm using another account, since I forgot the password of the first one. Thank you so much for such a comprehensive and very informative response. Precisely, this will surely be a great help in my dilemma. I am so happy to learn these bright ideas, which can be a great factor in the quality care that I could give to my Cielo.

You have mentioned about the greens in the diet, I am interested to know more about it. Thanks!

I agree with Kate that you should really reconsider if your child is ready for potty training or not. Though some two-year-old children are totally potty-ready, not all of them are prepared to make the transition. I totally understand wanting to get away from diapers, especially with a sensitive child. I have four of my own and two of them are still in diapers at 1 and 2 years old. Letting a child follow their own timeline is especially important when it comes to toilet learning. Have you tried cloth nappies? One of my children had a horrible time with rashes in disposables, which was totally cured by switching to cloth.

Hi Josephine,

You wanted more information on greens. An easy way to get more greens into the diet of a toddler is to make green smoothies. This helps to not only loosen the bowels a bit (avoiding constipation) but also adds a lot of good vitamins and minerals to help keep a child healthy.

Here's a fun video showing you a toddler's reaction to his very first green smoothie. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/PW7G6m3WfPk