About a Year Ago
When the kiddo was about 1 1/2, he started to get really interested in the potty. I panicked and bought a bunch of stuff - the potty, the books for him, and the books for us. I read the super popular 3-day method one, which was super preachy and judgey. The basic premise is that when they're ready, you just dedicate 3 days to doing nothing other than learning the potty, and by the end they're trained. One point that stuck with me was that it didn't make sense to try to potty train at home if the daycare provider wasn't on board too - so we waited until he would switch to the daycare class that had access to potties. We continued to read him the books and try to get him to sit occasionally, but mostly we were just waiting.
A Couple Months Ago
When he switched to the next daycare class, it turned out they had a different approach. They subscribed to the 'sit on the potty every 20 minutes' method, and wanted to wait until he was interested and asking to use it. He tried once or twice and was terrified, and then had no interest despite considerable peer pressure. I wanted to help him get over the fear by just doing the 3 day thing, but another thing the book said was not to try this during a period of other stress -which has been basically every day since the end of the summer for us, between the renovation, the holidays, and the move. So, we waited. I talked up the upcoming goodbye to diapers, but mostly we waited.
About a Week Ago
The potty was one of the things we packed in our air-ship boxes, that arrived about a week ago during the midst of our intense house hunting. After the long day of seeing lots and lots of places, it was rainy and cold, and everyone was happy to have an inside day. I casually mentioned to him that he should try out the potty, which he hadn't seen in almost a month. He asked "why?", as he does constantly now, and I said something about it being time to say goodbye to diapers. I really didn't intend to do this now at all.
Well, he completely grabbed onto the idea. He resisted for an hour or two, and then finally gave in and used it. For the rest of the day, we kept the potty in the living room near where he was playing so he didn't have to go too far. The book says you should keep them naked at first, but it's January and he was not having any of that. By the end of the day he had gone a couple times and said loudly that the potty isn't scary, "it's my friend."
We had a short regression when I put diapers back on him the next two days to go see houses. It really confused him, so I decided we just need to go all in.
Three Dedicated Days
So then we took another stab at the intense day where we stay inside and basically do nothing but try to get to the potty in time. The second day we took a few short trips outside to run errands - nothing that took longer than an hour to get back to the house. And the third day we took a longer trip that took about 3 hours to get back. I was panicked the whole time and carrying an arsenal of wipes and changes, but he didn't have any accidents at all. He seems to completely get the concept and have the ability to hold it until we get back to his potty - which I think counts as a huge success.
playing in the living room with the potty very close by
Not Quite There Yet
He's refusing to use public potties right now, so we still don't feel ready to make longer trips yet. Over the weekend, we took two longer trips and immediately found the restrooms when we arrived. It worked one time, and he proudly ran into the museum screaming "Mommy, I peed in the potty!!", for everyone to hear. The other time it didn't work at all- it turned into a huge battle of stubbornness that took all the time we had to see the museum, ultimately kind of ruining the day. We're hoping to start making weekend trips soon, so this will be our new challenge. Maybe if we just carry the little potty seat with us? Is that weird?
The book says you can do sleep later and put them in pull ups for naptime and bedtime, but he refuses. He keeps pointing out that we said goodbye to diapers, and we're losing the argument. Trying to use other words to try to make a differentiation between diapers and pull ups doesn't seem to work. So far, he's making it through nap time without a diaper, and almost making bedtime.
The other issue we have is that we've been using TV shows as a treat to encourage him to go - and now we need to ween that back off. I think he's purposefully going to the potty when he wants to watch a show now, so I'll have to find a way to back off of that.
Conclusion?
I guess I'm a big advocate for the 3 day method now, against my better wishes. The sitting every 20 minutes thing wasn't working for him, and he needed a push to just do it. Since I'm home with him now anyway, it seemed like a good use of my time at least. I feel a little bad pushing him through this when there's so much going on in his life right now - but frankly he seems fine. He's super proud of himself. This is yet another thing that I've been stressing out about for a year now, I guess, so I'm happy to be mostly past it. I know we're not quite all the way there and still have a risk of backsliding - but he's come a long way.
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