My son turned 2 in August. I introduced the idea of potty training awhile ago because he expressed interest around 1.5, but never pushed it and just let him set the pace. After he turned 2 he started trying more, and I’d give more gentle encouragement (stuff like “let’s go pee on the big potty real quick, and then we will go play train tracks”). If he resisted, I’d tell him that was ok, we’ll go play and would suggest that maybe we could try later.

It’s gone fine, I’m not overly concerned with pushing him and have let him set the pace. The last couple weeks he got fairly resistant. I think it’s largely because it takes him some time to relax and be able to release. I tried the warm water trick a couple times which helped, but he was still telling me no every time I’d suggest taking a potty break.

Well…over the weekend, he asked about my husband peeing standing up. He’s seen him do it before, but never really showed an interest until now. He then asked to “try it”. So we set up his step stool in front of the potty, lined him up, and my husband showed him how to angle it down toward the water 😂 We honestly weren’t expecting much - maybe stand for a few seconds and then say “all done!” because that’s what he does sitting down if he can’t relax and go pretty quickly. To our surprise, he almost instantly started peeing, and went A LOT. He was so excited with himself too. He gets excited every time, but he was noticeably more excited. Since that first time two days ago, he’s told me 3 times that he needs to go. We go in, he stands where he needs to be and asks me to help direct it, and he goes! He had not asked on his own to go potty before now.

Here’s my thing - I know from when I potty trained my oldest (now 9 years old) that they suggest getting them to learn to pee sitting down since they’ll need to do that for pooping. But he has done so well in such a short time since he tried standing up like daddy. And I feel like it would be hard to tell him he needs to pee sitting on his seat after he has been so excited to go now (I know that’s probably my fault for letting him pee standing to begin with).

Has anyone’s toddler learned to pee standing up early? Or any other input? I don’t want to set him back and make potty training more difficult for him, so if I need to have him go back to sitting, I will try to figure out a way to do that without confusing him.