Toilet-Training: A Collection of Potties

We began toilet-training Ian in August, once I received the training pants that I had ordered from Amazon and a Taobao spree.  We had expected it to be difficult, and it was indeed fraught with difficulties.  We had not much idea on how to start, and began by putting him in the training pants at night, after his shower.  This was to let him feel the wetness when he peed or pooed in his underwear.  It was very tiring as he kept dirtying his undies and the floor.

We had no success in getting him to sit on the potty to do his business.  He resisted very strongly whenever we asked him to sit on it.  This is how his first potty looked like (it was one of the wedding gifts from my Mom).

Whenever we asked him to sit on it, he would point to our toilet bowl and once, we even found him hanging over the seat using his hands to prop himself up.  After about 2-3 weeks of futile attempts to get him seated on his own potty, we decided to splurge on the Fisher Price potty.  It was not very easy to find this and we only saw it at Toyrus and Robinsons (not even the John Little or Kiddy Palace branches that we visited).  There was no sale at Robinsons, but we bought it anyway ($79, IIRC).  We felt that it was really expensive as compared to other normal types of potty seats, and when I paid at the cashier, I was rather apprehensive that the money would be wasted.

Hubby assembled the potty when we got home, and it was a big, big relief when Ian happily sat on it and peed.  There was a sensor at the bottom that would activate songs when he peed or pooed, and this was good, because it enabled us to know whether he was successful or not without having to check.

We had this potty for about 3 weeks now, and recently, Ian has been going to it whenever we are at home.  He has been keeping his undies dry most of the time, except for one or two accidents when he leaked a little and ran to the potty.

I checked with his childcare teachers on whether they could help our potty-training by bringing him to the toilet with the other children who were already trained.  However, they told me that Ian must be able to stand and pee before they could do it.  I did not understand the rationale behind this 'rule', but that meant we had to work harder at home and bring the toilet-training one step further before he could go to school without diapers. 

At the current stage, we still had to put him in diapers when going out.  During our recent visit to the child development therapy sessions, we had faced difficulty in finding a child's toilet seat when Ian had wanted to poo, and he ended up doing it in his diapers after enduring it for some time.  Hence, to aid with our training, we decided to get a travel potty.  I spotted this on Amazon and bought it - Potette Plus travel potty.

Hopefully, this is money well-spent too...