Potty Training Tales

Thought I'd do a summary of what's been going on this week with Jase and the potty training. He's three now, so I'd been thinking about doing this for quite some time. I have heard a million horror stories about potty training, so I was completely dreading it and fearing the worst. Because of this fear, I had been very careful not to PUSH it with him at all over these last few months. We talk about it a lot, rented some videos from the library, show him how to do it, ask him if he wants to try, but never forced anything or made it seem like a chore.

I use the Babywise book to do sleep training when my kids are little, so I bought the follow-up to that book called Toddlerwise. There's a chapter in there on potty training. I decided to try out this author's idea instead of spending hours and hours reading other methods, etc, and wasting more time. Here's the synopsis of his do-it-in-one-day potty training:

The day before you are going to start, take child to store and let them pick out special treats/candies and some cool new undies. Jase seemed totally disinterested in choosing any of these things. So I "helped" him choose. That night, you role play with a doll on how to go to the potty. We put Jase's undies on Buzz Lightyear (hilarious) and we had Jase offer him a drink. Later we took him to the potty and I had a small container of water hidden in my hand to make the experience more realistic for him. Jase thought that was pretty cool! You also talk it up like it's the coolest thing since sliced bread, and put his treats/reward toys out where he can see them.
His overall point of potty training is that you want your child to keep their undies CLEAN (no pee) and DRY (no poop). You actually reinforce this the entire time you are training. I had never heard this before and I thought it made lots of sense and was pretty cool. So periodically throughout the training day, I would ask if Jase's undies were still clean and dry, and if he said yes, he got a treat. This seemed to work REALLY well. Then we they actually go in the potty you give them double the treats and say "Oh look, bc you went in the potty your underwear are still clean and dry! Good job!"

Anyways, there's a few more things to it but basically you get the idea. So day#1 was harder than I anticipated. You are supposed to give them sugary drinks like kool-aid so it will make your child want to drink a lot (that worked!). My first mistake was not making him go to the bathroom every half an hour. The child had so much to drink he was just peeing all over the place! Ha! But the good part about that was that he quickly learned that it felt yucky to be wet. After his afternoon nap, I started setting a timer to take him into the bathroom and let him sit on the potty. I would read stories, play games, be silly until he went! Roob and I would take turns doing this bc it started to get a bit taxing on me spending all day in the bathroom. Ugh. I'm so impatient!

Overnight he did well (we brought him straight to the bathroom as soon as he woke up) and I was so excited! I had church that afternoon and was completely nervous about taking him with it only being day #2 of training. Well he did GREAT! I took him to the bathroom 3 times which prevented any accidents. I think he had one accident that second day (it's getting hard to remember now). By day #3 he was definitely going on his own initiative for number "2." Ha ha ha. I figured bladder control would be harder to learn (it was). By day #4 or 5 he started going to the bathroom on his own for number "1." Hooray! I made sure not to go anywhere those next few days after the initial potty training day just so he'd have more of a chance to get everything down pact.

We bought a couple of bigger toys that he picked out (one of which was the weeble wobble treehouse--go figure) that we used as motivation to keep him clean and dry for an entire day. I think that was day #3. He got his toy guns that day and the next day was able to earn the big Weeble treehouse. We also had a bunch of hotwheels cars that he got along the way for staying dry...
Yesterday (day #6) I decided to head out to town to get some shopping done. Besides FREAKING OUT about him touching EVERYTHING in the public restrooms, he did GREAT! We left the house at noon and got home about 7pm. No problems! Though, we did take him to the bathroom at least 4 times :)

Anyways, I could not be any prouder of my boy!!! I am still trying to be aware of the bathroom thing, especially if he is playing or doing something really fun that he may not want to stop and go potty...but overall I have to say things went WAY better than expected and I will definitely do this same method when Ian's good and ready. Hopefully that is a long time from now ;)