Potty Training – Round 2

This is more for my records than it is for anyone else, because I am sure I am much more concerned with my child’s bathroom habits than you are!

At the beginning of the summer we tried potty training.  She was showing all the signs and seemed to be ready.  No go.  Once she figured out that she had to think about it all the time, she wasn’t all about it any more.  I asked her if she wanted a diaper, she said yes – game over.

So, she spent the next few weeks in diapers.  Fine by me.  As strong willed as she is, there is no point in pushing anything on her that she doesn’t want to do unless you are ready for a huge fight.  A week or so after we got back from Grands’ Camp, she woke up one morning and asked for big girl underwear.  I wasn’t too excited about it, just figured we’d have another nice run and then it would be over again until the next time.  This time, though, she was really into it.  So I read a few articles on potty training and I came up with a game plan.  I was really going to put some work into it this time and see if it would stick.  So I set aside a few days and we didn’t go anywhere.  She did not leave my sight.  I set a timer for 30 minutes, let her run around in just underwear and a shirt, and when the time would go off we’d head to the potty.  We did this for two days straight.  No breaks, no playing by herself, no nothing.  We read a lot of books while she was in there, sang some good songs, played some games, unrolled and rolled the toiler paper over and over again.  It wasn’t a super fun couple of days, but by the end of the second day we didn’t need the timer anymore and she was really getting the hang of it.  I used M&Ms (the tiny ones in the tube) as her reward, which totally worked for her.  She got 1 M&M for peeing and 2 for the other.  She was so proud of herself every time.  Over those two days, we had a few accidents, but not many.  Then over the next week, we would have an accident here or there, but she did a great job peeing.  The pooping, however, was not going so well.  My regular 9am every morning pooper was just not pooping.  She pooped in her underwear (see what I was talking about – no one really cares about this but me!) a few times and didn’t like it, but wasn’t thrilled about the idea of going on the potty.  She gagged when she saw it, so I think she didn’t like that it looked nasty and smelled bad.  Can you blame her?  So I had to make a judgment call.  Everything I read said that if they want to leave the bathroom, let them.  If they don’t want to do it, don’t make them.  I know Caroline and I knew if she would just go one time and we could make a big deal out of it and let her see how proud she was, that would be all it would take.  So I made her sit in there longer than she wanted to, even physically holding her down sometimes when she wouldn’t sit down.  Every time she would sit down we would color, read, etc. and I just pray over and over again that she would finally just go.  By this point it had been about 3 – 4 days and I was worried about her making herself sick.  She was complaining that her tummy was hurting. (Sidenote: please don’t think that I believe that God really has a lot of time to worry about C pooping.  Before every prayer I would say to Him that I knew he had A LOT of other things on his plate, but that this was really important to me, so I was asking for His help!)  It even got to the point that I kind of hoped she would crap her pants, just so she could poop.  Then one day (about 2 weeks after all of this began), Mom and I took the kids to the pool.  We were eating lunch and C said she needed to go potty and she said her stomach hurt.  So I took her into the bathroom and she told me leave her alone.  After a few minutes, she yelled out, ‘Mommy, I shoo-shooed!’  Sure enough, there it was.  I made a big deal out of it and told her how proud I was and she couldn’t wait to go tell everyone.  Then about 10 minutes later, she said she needed to go again.  I thought she just liked the attention, but after a few minutes, there it was again!

After that day, there has been no turning back.  She has had a handful of accidents, but that is going to happen.  She tells us when she needs to go potty and asks us to leave her alone when she needs to do a #2.  She still wears diapers for nap and at night, but her nap time diapers are pretty dry.  I‘ll wait until she can do that for a solid couple of weeks and then she’ll only wear diapers at night. 

So, what have you done this summer?  I have taught my daughter how to pee and take a dump in the toilet – a skill she will practice the rest of her life (hopefully).  Boom.