Oh Crap! Potty Training

you may want to do a Reset, but you will go about it differently. For
the child under twenty-two months, there is a very real possibility
that she is clueless. There’s a lot going on developmentally and the
timing may just be off. Please don’t use this as a cop out. I have
sixteen-month-olds who potty train with no problem. If you want to
potty train between sixteen and twenty-two months, that is awesome.
Chances are your child has shown some indication that this is
possible. Go with your intuition. You should have a sense of progress.
If you see no progress, consider a Reset.
For this child, you do not need to put the potty away. If they
indicate that they’d like to use the potty, it’s fine. With this age,
there’s usually little to no behavior going on. The child is just really
not connecting the dots. You still want to set a new start date,
perhaps a little longer out than four weeks, for when you’ll try again.
You do want to keep that in your head, so diapers don’t sort of take
over.
Just to be clear, from twenty-two to twenty-four months is an
unclear zone :). Sometimes a child can be truly clueless and
sometimes not. It’s for you to call. I would look back on their other
milestones and see if they were on target or early or late. That’s
usually the best indicator.
Two things often happen when parents read this chapter or feel
they might need a Reset. The first is that I’ll hear from a parent who’s
at the end of her rope on the second day of potty training and wants
to know if a Reset is appropriate. I’m very sorry, and I don’t mean to
sound hard-core, but that’s a ridiculously small amount of time in
which to lose your marbles. Your child is learning a new skill, and no