I have a childcare and the padded seat with a step stool has been excellent we finally threw the potty chairs away...Good luck....

Potty chairs are a pain to clean and I personally hate to see them in the bathroom. I prefer the padded seat on the toilet and a step. I have potty trained three girls and will soon start with a boy.

Well, my son is only 10 months old so I cant say from experiece, only what logic we have used. Although he is not old enough to use it, we went ahead and bought something so he can get used to it. We bought a 3 in one potty from WalMart. It is a potty with a small padded seat. Then, when thet get a little older, the plastic liner and padded seat fit onto the regular toilet seat and other part of the little potty becomes a step stool. We felt this was best b/c if he refuses to use the little potty, we have a seat for the big potty and a stool too. It was only 16.00! Good Luck!!

Hi! This was me about two years ago! I have two older sons, too!

I just went by the old method (potty) to see how she took to
it...She wasn't comfortable enough to go on the BIG potty, so this worked for us. (And slowly weaning them away from
the Diapers/pull-ups is Best too)
When she was comfortable enough...I tried her on the
Big potty (like mommy) - I used to go "with her" - to show
her - She thought it was fun but still unsure...
One day she just climbed up on a stool and used the 'big
one'...(ours) - LOL
The morale of my experiences is - start out slow, and gradually increase to the BIG potty and stepstool as He/She feels comfortable...:-)

It is going to depend on what your child feels comfortable with. My son hated the potty chair and went right to the big potty. My daughter on the other hand only would go on the potty chair. So you are just going to have to use trial and error. They have cool potty chairs now that sing to them when they go!