I haven’t blogged for a couple of years, so I’m trying to
get unstuck…This is something easy for me to write about and get the creative
juices flowing. So here ya go…All I know about potty training by me…A person
getting unstuck. Oh, and a person who has finished potty training.
- You CAN do it. I can remember every hurdle like it was
yesterday…how will we ever get them to sleep through the night, how will we
ever get them to stop the bottle? Will they ever learn to this or that or crawl
or walk or talk or say thank you? Potty Training seemed so overwhelming to me.
I want a 1, 2, 3, but it just doesn’t work that way and in spite of my “follow
the rules and get the result” thinking, we really did get it done and my
instincts were better than I thought. Potty training was like a pop quiz for
me…Do you really know your kids? And the answer was/is, “Yes, I do”.
- They are ready when they’re ready…don’t sweat it My pediatrician told us these words of
wisdom: “Look, you can start when they are 2 and spend forever doing it…or you
can just wait until they are 3 and do it quickly” So, while all my friends with girls were done when they were
2, we just waited. I trained Jonathan just before he turned 3 and tried David a
few months later, but it just wasn’t working with David. He was constantly
having accidents even after I’d just taken him to the potty…so I just stopped
and decided to try later. I tried again when David was just 3 ½ , 8 months
after I trained Jonathan, and it was
a snap…I could not believe what a difference that extra time made!
- Every one is different….don’t worry you’ll know
what to do! I guess having twins gave us an up close
look at this. I had a hunch that one son would do well with a “Potty train in a
day” method. So I gave it a shot and it worked. We used the Dr. Phil one day method and it was perfect for
him, he loved all the attention, loved that there was lots of fanfare for his
“productions.” Bam, he had it. One day, Really. Sure we had some tweaking to
do, and a few backslides but all in all… he had it in one day. David wanted
nothing to do with our one day potty party and so 8 months later, on the second
try, I just dove in with a low key, “Do you want big boy underwear?” and we
were on our way, and he got it rather quickly.
- Every one is different…match the reward to the
boy! Jonathan was so happy with candy for a
reward. Initially he got candy every time he went potty but later, when he had the
concept down, he got candy when he initiated it, either by telling me or going
on his own. David liked the candy
rewards but when it came to the very last hurdle it just didn’t seem to
motivate him. He just couldn’t seem to get the idea that he had to poop in the
potty. So I told him that if he could poop consistently in the potty that he
could ride on a digger…um, yep, a giant piece of construction equipment. And
heck ya, it worked. He put his mind to it and got it done for that reward…that
spoke his language…it was what he wanted and it motivated him. We made a little
chart for him and every time he pooped in the potty he got a digger sticker and
he knew that once he got so many stickers it was his. He just got enough and I pulled some
strings to get that digger ride…he earned it.
- Don’t go back to the Pull Ups…no matter how
tempting I went out of town for a few days while we
were in the process of potty training and when I got back I was surprised to
see how far Jonathan had regressed. I finally realized it was because my
husband had been putting him in pull ups for various outings because it was
easier. Not a lot, just a couple of times but it was enough to confuse him
about what the goal was. I made a
firm house rule that there would be no going back. (Unless as I mentioned
earlier, we decided to try again later) No matter how inconvenient , we did
outings with big boy underwear and made it work. It was a pain finding toilets all
over the place, getting the boys used to different, and sometimes scary/loud
toilets, dragging the little potty around in the back of the car etc. etc. But in
the long run, it worked, and it didn’t last long. With each boy, once we
switched for good, they got the message that this was the new normal. (The only
exception to this was airplane travel, never did find a way around that one!)
- Peeing standing up…a function of height…I was trying to get them to pee standing up
because I thought it would be so much easier…it never seemed to work. I had
lots of cool ideas from people on how to do this, and then one day…they grew.
Its that simple, once they were tall enough they saw daddy stand and pee and
they stood and peed. 'Nuff said.
- Mistakes are usually my fault…not theirs My sister told me early on that its not so
much about training the child as training the parent. I can tell you this was
so true for me! Almost every time the boys have an accident its because I
forgot to remind them to go. Now I am “trained” and know to ask often and make
them go often. (But not so often that they are annoyed about the whole
thing…another good reason to wait until they are older) If they don’t want to
go, I try not to force it too hard but divert their attention and move them
into the potty. The older they’ve gotten, the less I’ve had to remind but I
still have to be aware of it and remind!
- Enjoy the Journey Today I asked David to go potty and he started
to go in the bathroom, I followed behind, as I usually do, to see if he needed
help. He turned and looked and me and shut the door right as I got to it
leaving me outside and him in the bathroom alone. From the other side I heard,
“I can do it myself.” And for a moment
he was a teenager and I was the mom of a teenager and it was happy and sad at
the same time…enjoy the journey, it goes by so fast.
