Waiting until they are truly ready! We tried too early with both of my kids, and had to give it up and try again when they were really interested in doing it.

We wrapped a bunch of small gifts (hot wheels cars, little books, mini figurines) and kept them in a basket in the bathroom. One successful and productive trip to the potty earns one gift. It worked like a charm with my kids.

I agree with Kelly. Waiting until they are ready is key. Once they realize what it is all about, they will get the hang of it without a lot of fuss. Once my kids were ready, there were a bunch of days without leaving the house so the kids could get used to it. I kept diapers or pull ups on at night and once there were dry for a couple weeks, I stopped using them.

The three day method worked wonders with my first. I put together a prize bucket of things I knew would motivate him and we stayed home for a weekend. He had one accident in those two days; he wanted those prizes and just got it done. By Monday he was back at day care without diapers.

So our now six-year-old was so stubborn. I literally bought books, potty chairs and charts. What finally did it was telling her that her diapers were going to her cousin who needed them more. Once I took them away and only gave her one option, training underwear, she knew the battle was won and not by her. I will have to say though that you need to wait until they understand the process. We tried to start too early for our middle child and she just didn't get it.

We set an alarm on the phone to go off a few times each hour, and each time the alarm went off, it was time to try to go potty. That early stage of potty training can be tough because they don't always recognize that they need to go, or they're too busy doing something else. And it's nice that it's the phone that's responsible for the alert, so it's not just mom or dad nagging. To this day, we still refer to that particular ring as "The Potty Robot"!