At 2 1/2, if they are not ready, that's ok because she's still young. My DD didn't get it 100% til after 3.

In my experience, the peepee was a bladder maturity thing. She just woke up one day over the hard part, completely 100% going to the potty. But to help, what I did was this:
I used the regular toilet. I took her to Kmart and let her pick out her own cushy potty seat (the ones that just sit on the big seat).

Wierd psychological things happen, too during potty training. At preschool, they would always say, "Did you turn the water yellow?" But guess what, at my house, we have tan toilets, so you can't SEE that the water is yellow! It took me a month to figure out, that it really bothered her that at school they had white potties and at home we had tan potties.

Pooping came as a fluke. She saw me using the fan while doing my poopie, and she asked could she turn the fan on, too. Then, voila, fan + poopie = success! (we did have a slight snafu one day when we went to a pottie that had no fan in the bathroom :-) but by that time she had it down pretty good). Books help with #2, also. Hey, we grownups like a nice reader's digest so why not them? :-)

Going thru potty training again is the main thing making me second-guess having another baby. It's not the training --- it's the fact that there is a period of time when they are 90% there (and that last 10% can kill you!). That 90% time for me seemed like forever.

Good luck to you, and don't worry - she may just not be ready. My DD knew the how-to's of going to the potty at an early age and wanted to copy what us grownups were doing so I figured she must be ready. But figuring out how to 'hold it' until getting to the potty and all that other stuff takes more maturity than intelligence.

It sounds like she is trying to "get it right" without you seeing her. She might feel embarassed or scutinized with you watching her. Often, my daughter does not want me to watch her or help her. Sometimes, she will even say "don't say I'm a good girl". She just doesn't always want a big deal made of the whole thing. I pasted the following from another post I responded to. I'm not sure what it was for us, but potty training was not the hard part about having a child. EVERYTHING ELSE was hard, very hard. Delivery, infancy, breast feeding, sleeping, etc, etc, etc....

I have a daughter who is very strong willed and what worked for us was to get her to feel proud about using the toilet. She was about 2 1/2. What we did was one day we sat down together and made a "toilet sticker book". We put together a bunch of paper, tied it to bind it, put her name on, wrote a story in it about how she was such a big girl and was going to start to use the potty like a "big girl" and every time she used the toilet she would get a sticker to put in her book. I bought stickers and kept them in the cupboard above the toilet and every time she would try to go I would let her look at the stickers. If she went, she got a sticker. If she didn't go she did not get one but got to look at them and hold them while she was on the toilet. She was already interested in stickers which is why I chose them as a motivator. So if stickers don't work for you maybe something else your child likes would work better. I let her wear underware or a diaper, I let her choose so she felt like she had control of the situation. I didn't make a big deal about it if she chose a diaper, but I would go on and on about what a big girl she was when she chose her panties. If she had an accident I would just say, thats okay we can get you a clean pair, try to see if you any more pee needs to come out. And I would have her sit on the toilet while I got her clean clothes.
We always used the big toilet with a ring in it at first so she didn't fall in and a stool at the base so her feet could touch. This was part of the "big girl" plan. It seemed to me that the little toilet just emphasized that she was still a baby. It also was better for me, I didn't want to clean the little toilet, seemed just a bad as changing diapers.

She still, shes almost 3, refuses to try to go if I suggest it in a "do what I tell you" voice. But we made sort of a game out of me "telling" her to go potty. I would ask her if she had any pee or poo that wanted to come out. And then we would call the pee and/or poo like you call a dog, come out, come out, come on. etc. It sounds really stupid and I would not want to be recorded saying this, but it works!!

I hope this helps you and your daughter. I would just advise you to try to help her to feel good about it and to be proud of her accomplishments. Try to let her make choices about things as much as is reasonable and she'll get it.

Good luck!!

It does sound like she's got the general idea, and is trying to get it right. She started to go pee, stopped, went to the bathroom to finish, right? You didn't "catch" her, you just happened to be around. She certainly wasn't doing anything wrong, she just had what we call "a little leak."

You might encourage her to go earlier, and remind her that she can always come back to what she's doing. w/ both my kids, that turned out to be important. As soon as I said, "wait right here, toys, Grace will be back in a minute, she just has to go potty," bingo, up she'd hop.

I agree w/ the idea that fighting about it isn't good. I also try to use an "I'm making a suggestion" or "the pee must want to come out" concept. Not "do what mommy says." (then, of course, my son says "nothing's coming out" when I KNOW he needs to go, so I threaten to take something away if he won't at least try, and there ya go, a HUGE leak. So I've certainly played the heavy)

Could you blame it on a timer? Talk about whether she likes getting her pull-ups wet, and ask her if she'd like to set a timer to remind her to try. Then it's HER timer, and HER reminder, and she just has to try. It's an idea.

Okay... I posted a response here a couple of days ago and it never showed up. Weird.

I wanted to thank everyone for their responses. Talley_Sue, I have been using a timer and it seems to help some. And I didn't mean to sound like catching DD in the bathroom was a bad thing. Sorry if I gave that impression. :)

Anyway, thanks again!

-Tara W