We didn’t force it. Bought the potty and “big boy” underwear. He was excited to try them at first but ultimately wanted to go back to diapers. We kept the potty out and continued to ask him if he wanted to try underwear. Eventually (several months later) he warmed up to the potty and the switch to underwear soon followed. This happened maybe a couple months after his peers—but we never had a single accident and we didn’t have to do any traumatic training. It was a very smooth transition.

Re: sleep training, they have shown that sleep trained babies, while they cry less at night (i.e the training), they have higher cortisol levels at night. Additionally, recent research has suggested that it may have an effect on attachment.

This is terrific advice.

We experienced many of the same things you mentioned and ended up fully embracing co-sleeping.

When our son was 2 and a bit he was ready to be in a toddler bed beside our bed. This happened more or less naturally with a bit of encouragement. It was around this time that he started “sleeping through the night”.

We recently had another baby and our eldest (almost 3 at the time) decided for himself that he was ready to sleep alone in his own room.

This process took a lot longer than some of the other people I’ve spoken with. However we’re okay with it because we never had to do any sort of sleep training, our son feels secure & has a healthy attachment with us, and in retrospect this whole process was shorter than it really seemed at the time.

So I guess what I’m saying is, try not to compare your situation to others—every child is so different. Do what you have to do to support your child and yourselves. And finally, this will pass more quickly than you think—you may even think fondly of these times later.

Good luck!

@Servais@discuss.tchncs.de, not that I don’t appreciate these posts, mostly just curious, but why do you continue to make regular posts if you do not have children?

For us there was no first word. Chatty babbling just sort of evolved into speaking. It was a spectrum of development with no clear divisions.