u/GroundbreakingEye289

I haven’t officially begun potty training my freshly turned 2 year old. We are waiting until the mid/late June when we will both be home and we can be consistent with diaper free time, etc. (We are planning to do the “Oh Crap Method”.). I wanted to potty train earlier around 20 months (and in someways she seemed ready at 18 months because we were EC curious but only did it a few times) but it was hard scheduling wise. We do daily parent & me activities and I would like to spend a week+ or at least a few days at home diaperless so I’m waiting until our activities naturally end.

My daughter seems to know what a toilet/potty is for. We’ve also read lots of potty training books. She seems to know the poop feeling and has asked to go poop a few times on the potty, etc. She also seems to be afraid of peeing on the potty which I don’t understand. She sometimes withholds until she asks for a diaper or has an accident. She says things like “I had an accident. I’m still learning.” “I listen to my body.” “I feel a rumble in my tummy.”

Occasionally and more frequently these last few days she hates getting a new diaper on. She immediately wants to try to use the potty whenever we take her diaper off. She is usually fine with me taking off her diaper and cleaning her up but hates it when I put on a fresh clean diaper. I think some of the books we read talk about how diapers are soggy, wet, and dirty. She’s also requested “big girl underwear”.

Sometimes I allow her to be diaper free when I can watch her around the house. I can’t always do that though and I haven’t set up her toy room for potty training yet either. A few months back this led to pee accidents because she refused to pee in the potty too.

Last night it was time for dinner and she refused to be re-diapered stating that she wanted to “poop on the potty”. My husband and I were very hungry so we just set up the potty chair and her potty tent (a play tent that she likes to poop in) near our kitchen table. She kept on getting off it and asking us to read to her while she was on the potty. We kept on having to redirect her back on the potty. I think at one point she did look like she needed to pee and if I sat her on her high chair with a pee pad she would have gone pee (she has in the past). She didn’t end up pooping all evening. Was this a delay tactic because she “was not hungry”? This ended up contributing to a delayed bedtime. I would really prefer if she ate dinner with us when we all were eating.

What do I do? I feel like she is using “needing to use the potty” to get out of things that she doesn’t want to do and she’s trying to explore her power of “needing to use the potty”. Do I set time limits for needing to use the potty?

Please help. I feel like I have a two year old tyrant living in my house. I love her dearly but she can be a tyrant.

I’ve been collecting art supplies for my 2 year old. I’ve known about dot markers but I know Montessori typically frowns upon "coloring inside the lines". This evening she had an opportunity to play with her friends dot markers and their dot marker books and she loved them.

Are the dot marker books harmful to her later creativity? Or just a positive fun creative experience for toddlers?

My mother wants my husband, myself and I to go camping with her and her adult friends for a few days/week in a little more than a month in Cape Cod, MA. I believe biking will be the main activity and we have a Burley.

My freshly turned 2 year old has never been camping before. (It would be tent camping too.). I think this could be a fun family experience. However, my LO kind of needs sleep in order to be on her best behavior, etc. she can have terrible meltdowns if she’s overtired, hungry, or overstimulated. (In the past my mother hasn’t been too compassionate if she has these meltdowns 🤷🏻‍♀️). My LO currently does 12-13 hours of sleep a day with a 2.5-3 hour nap in the afternoon. One of my concerns is that she won’t be able to sleep/nap well which could sour the camping experience for everyone. Also, then my husband and/or I are also committing ourselves to staying with her at the campsite for 3+ hours so she can nap. I don’t think sleeping in the Burley is supposed to be safe. My husband wants to get her a blackout tent which isn’t cheap but he hopes that will help her nap/sleep. We currently roomshare so I think she would like sharing the tent with us.

Part of me wants to skip this trip because I don’t think she/we are ready plus we will be missing some activities at home that I already paid for but part of me thinks that who knows if/when we will have this opportunity to do this with my mother again. My mother does come visit us every other month so we do get to see her but not a lot.

Anyone have a high sleep needs toddler and has had success with tent camping in the summer?