(Yeah, the subject is your warning. You can stop reading here if you don’t like the words pee and poop, ha!)
A GOOD THING.
It’s hard to tell in this picture, but he’s sitting on his frog potty after taking a bath. Let me say, I *highly* recommend this potty for boys…the high front is a wonderful feature! If it was a removable piece, I guarantee you that I’d find it on the floor 20 times a day!
We started potty training on November 1st. It was an interesting week, to say the least. I put Alex on the potty every 20 – 30 minutes all day, every day that week. (Unless he did a fantastic job, and then I’d give him a longer time in between…) It was exhausting for both of us, and poor Max didn’t get as much attention as usual either.
I anticipated plenty of accidents, and there was no punishment involved. He was rewarded with 1 or 2 jelly beans for each potty success. (And I was rewarded with more laundry for every failure, ha!)
A few days into it, he started getting VERY angry at me when I’d try to put him on the potty. I wasn’t about to back down now, though, so we kept at it. There were plenty of tears shed, and I fell into bed exhausted every night!
We stayed home most of the week, but there was one day (midwife appointment) when I absolutely had to leave the house. On that trip, I learned that it’s almost impossible to go shopping, get a 2 year old on the store potty, and hold a not-yet-walking 1 year old all at the same time. If my mom hadn’t been with us on that first shopping trip, it would have been a distaster!
This prompted a purchase I’ll probably never regret – a portable potty seat with great options: The legs fold in to fit in a diaper bag, it can be used open on any toilet (and it’s STURDY) or pop up the legs, throw in a plastic bag, and it’s a real portable potty! (Potette Plus)
(Anyway, enough about the genius products that been-there-done-that parents have invented…back to Alex!)
So anyway, over a month since we started potty training, there are good days and bad days. Alex understands the concept. He just doesn’t really care. If we make him go potty, he can do it independently on the frog potty or on the toilet. On his own, though, he really doesn’t care if his underwear is wet. He rarely initiates trips to the bathroom (although sometimes he’ll surprise us). He stays dry through almost every nap, though!
He’s stubborn, too. Today, he sat on the potty for over 30 minutes without going. We *had* to go to the store, and he *insisted* he couldn’t pee. Finally, I had to toss him in the car and go. Guess who peed while we were out? (And who wet his underwear TWO MORE TIMES today?)
My newest “incentive” is Christmas tree shaped ice cream treats. We rarely give our kids dessert before bed, but Alex knows we have these…and the only way he can earn one is to stay dry all day. If he stays dry, he gets a Christmas tree ice cream topped with red & green sprinkles on a GLASS snowman plate, with a grown-up fork. That’s big stuff when you’re 2! Out of 5 days, he’s only succeeded in earning one ice cream dessert. And I’ve stopped giving him any sweet snacks, too. If he wants sweets, he’ll just have to start taking ownership of this potty thing.
He’s proud of his big-boy underwear. His favorite is Jeff Gordon racecar undies. He also has Thomas the Train and “Just Like Daddy” big boy underwear. He’s picked it all himself, and he loves choosing what he’ll wear each day.
We use pull-ups for naptime and bedtime, and we also put him in pull-ups at church (to be kind to the nursery workers) or for all day trips away from home. Oddly enough, he’s usually doing an amazing job of staying dry during naps or when we’re out and about. While I swore I’d never use pull-ups during the day, we’re finding that Alex loves keeping the little picture on his pull-up (it goes away when wet…) and sometimes it’s the incentive we need to keep him dry.
Poop is another story – sometimes he cares; sometimes he doesn’t. He gets a treat from his Trunk or Treat bag if he does it on the potty. We don’t expect perfection in this area yet, but some days he’s WONDERFUL at it! He’s quite likely to tell us when he needs to do this, although sometimes he tells us too late.
Oh, and now we move on to the new obsession – TOILET PAPER. We’d reached the point where we send Alex to the bathroom on his own every hour or so. Except he’s bored with the whole potty thing, so he needed to add in something new – using half a roll of toilet paper every time he’s in the bathroom alone. I’ve fished a LOT of toilet paper out of the potty in the past few days! So, no more independent potty trips for Alex until I can trust him again.
So, we stick with it. We’re the “meanies” who send our son to the potty every hour, even if he gets angry with us. We don’t put up with nonsense. We keep hoping he’ll get it eventually…and *praying* he gets it figured out by April! ;)
2 comments:
oo he will get it.. one day it will click.. or one day he will really want an incentive and work hard to get it! Keep on working at it!
Something a mother of 4 (boys and girls) told me to do: have him run around without bottoms until he is potty trained. Tell him he may not wear his beloved underwear until he learns to use the potty by himself. It worked for her 4 and my first 2 (obviously Kai is too little). My kids never minded pee or poop in their underwear, but they sure minded peeing all over themselves. Stick with it mama. He will get it. The oldest is often the most difficult, because there are no other siblings to model after.
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