Saturday, July 19, 2008

And so the potty training begins...


Today we began the potty training process with Josiah and it started off pretty rocky, but by the end of the day he was doing much better. We went through no less than 6 pairs of underwear in the morning as he had lots of accidents, but once he figured out how to successfully pull his underwear up and down it went a lot smoother. For the sake of giving him some dignity with his future wife someday, we decided not to post the one of him on the potty, but instead I have this one of him playing at the kitchen table which is less revealing. He can thank me later for that one.

When he had a successful go at making it to the toilet (and not peeing through his underwear as he did a couple of times), we gave him some M & M's to enjoy. Here you see him eating his M & M's after one of the first successful attempts.

I discovered early on that we had to do "practice" sessions every 15-20 minutes or so in order to not have accidents. Many of these practice sessions were also successes, so that was great. When he didn't want to practice, we just took away the toys he was playing with and that worked great to motivate him. Some methods advocate for not having any toys around all day, so as not to distract the child from potty training. My question for that is, "Then what in the world do you do with them all day without some form of toys?" As one of my twin mom friends pointed out, many of the "experts" that write about these things don't necessarily have kids.

After his nap we had two more accidents, one was that he peed in his bed as a wake up call (no fun I am sure) and then we had a "poop on the kitchen floor incident." Josiah was really shocked and worriedly yelled, "Poop on floor!" He was concerned we would be mad, but we told him it was an accident and where the poop should go next time. Anyway, that was pretty funny. I asked Josiah if he had a good day and he said, "Yes" and I asked him if he liked potty training and he said, "Sometimes." When I questioned him as to why it was "sometimes" he tried to tell me in his own way that he didn't like the messes he made. It was cute, but hard to remember exactly what he said though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Too much fun! with Jake i hung a calendar next to the potty & he got a stickers (too lazy to make a "chart"). He also got Hot Wheels (now they are everywhere) & then there was a $20 toy he wanted, so he couldn't have it until he had a FULL day with zero accidents. It probably took about 2 weeks (not counting nights-he wore pullups). My sister is going through this now with her 2.5 year old. Jake was almost 3, but he's good to go now ;-) Have fun!!!