Day 3 with Oh Crap - Does this sound like my 23 month old is ready or should we wait?

My second child is 23 months old (2 years old in mid January). I trained my first child right after he turned 2 years old with the Oh Crap method and it went spectacularly. Within the first few hours, he was running to the potty to go pee. Poop took a month or two to really nail down and we ended up bribing him with something like three M&Ms for each poop but it wasn’t super difficult.

My daughter is completely different from my son in almost every way, and potty training is proving to be no different. We’re on day 3 and don’t really see much of an improvement. The only glimpses of hope that I see are after she pees on the floor, she’ll call for me or start crying. Twice now she’s stopped mid stream and gotten my attention in some way but when I run to move her onto the potty, she refuses to finish. She’s perfectly fine with just sitting on the potty for as long as I let her and playing or singing or whatever. Also, one time I told her not to throw a toy and she ran into the next room and peed on the floor. I ran after her the best I could because I figured that’s what she was doing but didn’t catch her. She seems to be holding both poop and pee in because she tenses up and I can tell she has to go (which she does eventually somehow) and she doesn’t go very often. She’s been going the tiniest bit of poop many, many times per day but won’t actually poop in the potty. One time, she just absolutely had to go and I did catch that. I made a big deal out of it with congratulations and a piece of candy. She just doesn’t really seem interested although she doesn’t quite outright refuse it.

My question is, if she’s clearly holding it in and can make herself go when she’s mad, does it sound like she’s ready enough to continue? I’d like to do this now because I’m off for two weeks and can focus on it. However, I also have an eight month old who wants to be held all day so it’s way more of a struggle than with my first child too. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself on only day 3 but I almost started crying at one point! Please share your success stories at this age with a rough beginning! And bonus points if your child is super string willed like mine!

Posted Dec 29, 2025, 7:54 PM UTC

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