My oldest was 4 1/2, my middle 3 1/2, and my youngest is 3 and nowhere near ready. Diapers are actually easier, in my opinion, than rushing to every potty in town when the need arises! ;-)

My oldest just turned 4 in the beginning of February. She finally has been toilet trained for about 4-5 months now, except at night, still using a diaper. I do admit, like the person above, going from potty to potty and gas station to nasty gas station gets so frustrating. But I started her at 2 and she would go when I put her on the potty, but never did it on her own. I stopped for about 6 months and tried again, same thing. Everyone told me not to worry, she will do it when ready and I had flashes of her walking down the aisle on her wedding day in diapers. One day she woke up and said she needed to use the potty and that was it. She did it at home. Once we went out, she wouldn’t use a public potty because she was scared of the loud flushers. I started to bring her potty seat when out in public and that helped. Eventually after 2 weeks she was going in public and without her potty seat. It was frustrating,although I never showed it. It really did happen when SHE was ready! Number 2 is only 11 weeks old but if she is going to take 2 years to potty train, I might start her now!

My first daughter was trained at 3 yrs old by bribery with dollar store toys, and sticker charts. She’s now 10 yrs old. It was hard but it happened. I learned with my first not to trust a child alone in the bathroom. She painted the bathroom wall with her poop.

My second daughter was 2 yrs. old when trained. I took her with me to go potty starting at 15 months old almost everytime I went potty and changed her diapers standing up in the bathroom. That was really hard. And I took a few days of diaper less days for active potty training, put pee pads on the largest part of my carpet, and we played an elmo potty song everytime she went. Had to catch her a few times doing poopy in her training pants to tell her to use the potty instead, once we put panties on her. And the pee pads on the floor didn’t help because she had accidents on the border of them on my carpet sometimes. She caught on pretty fast but it was still hard.

My first and second had the issue at the beginning where they didn’t want to even sit on the potty. I used potty training books and eventually with sometimes being firm made them sit on the potty until they eventually got the desire on their own. I don’t think you necesarily need to be firm though with that issue. I think that was a mistake on my part regardless of when they learned to use the potty.

With my third daughter who is 2 and a half, we are potty training. We ditched the diapers and got waterproof training pants. And we are on week 4 and she is pottying mostly with initiative and with cues from us, on the potty. She’s pooped on her own and had me come see and she’s also pooped in her panties just today actually. With her I never forced her to sit on the potty. I just got potty dvds that made her laugh and learn to use the potty. She loves Once Upon a Potty because Prudence turns around and shows her her poopy hole. It makes her laugh every time. Also, she really absorbed a lot from Potty Power and will make comments saying, “I have potty power” and “I’m on my way” Another thing I did when I was losing the battle at one point was to get her baby alive dolly which comes with panties out and play saying ”
Baby BooBoo needs to go potty.” And after I played dolly goes potty on her cheer for me potty, she was loving playing it over and over again for a week straight, and it totally helped her “want” to go potty too. But it’s still not a hundred percent because there is still some accidents. But I know from experience they stop having accidents alltogether when they come 180 and it clicks for them it’s not ok to go poopy in their pants even if they are playing with toys being busy. Potty training always takes effort but once you try different methods, taking a break being one of them, it will happen if you don’t give up trying different things.