OK, bit of backstory. My mum bought DS a potty a few weeks back. I thought she was mad, but she said it was a good idea to just leave it in the house for him to play with / get used to etc. Made sense, so we did. It's in the bathroom.
2 days ago, DS was in the bath and started to make his "poo face", so I hoiked him out and sat him on the potty, where he had a poo. He was rather impressed and tried to eat it, as it meant he could then get back in the bath, whereas previously pooing at bath time has had to mean the end of the bath for obvious reasons.
I didn't think much of it really, but tonight he was sitting in the bath, then suddenly stood up and pointed to his potty, so I got him out of the bath. He sat down and had a poo. He then got up, but changed his mind and sat back down again and pooed a bit more. He seemed very aware that he wanted to poo in the potty. He then got up and motioned to get back in the bath.
So, I'm probably sounding a bit bonkers and you're wondering why I'm posting. My concern is that I don't think he's ready to potty train. His speech isn't overly developed yet so beyond pointing at the potty he won't be able to tell me that he needs it. He does occasionally pull at his nappy when he's weeing, and if his nappy is wet and he needs a poo he will ask to be changed. But if I tried full-on potty training, I'm pretty sure he'd have no idea what I'm going on about.
In addition, we have family who live 4 hours away so often go on long car journeys. I'm thinking DS is far too young to be able to hold on so surely potty training early would be a total disaster in this respect.
What's the best thing for me to do? I don't want to discourage his interest but at the same time I don't want to confuse him! FWIW I have PND and get a bit anxious about doing things "right" for DS so please excuse me if I'm coming across as a bit neurotic!
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Potty training
17 MO pooing in potty - I don't think he's ready.
LetThereBeCupcakes · 26/06/2014 19:19
I would let him to continue to use the potty but wear nappies IYSWIM. I don't think he would have bladder/bowel control at that age to be properly trained.
I'm sure there will be someone my MIL along in a min to say that their DC was potty trained at nine months, but I'm only going on my experience 
DD is two and no where ready but she has developmental delays, her brothers were out of nappies around 2.5
lol amother - think it's fair to say that if you let her choose she was kind of leading no? 
We had a little go at potty training with DD at 17 months as she was doing all her poos and most pees in the toilet, dry at night etc. Gave it a couple of weeks and she didn't seem to be quite getting it so we put her back in nappies. Perhaps we should have carried on, she was only having 1 accident a day or so, I'd have killed for that success rate with DS at 3!
But we figured she was very little and there was no hurry. Carried on using the toilet whenever she wanted, before going out etc - she'd often be in the same dry nappy all day and night.
We had another go at 2.2 and she got it straight away, so I don't think all that practice was going to waste. I didn't think it'd make much difference but actually it's lovely not to have to faff around with nappies, even dry ones.
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