Monday, July 23, 2012

Adventures in Potty Training

Everyone has their method for this it seems and I'm absolutely stealing other people's ideas so I'm not claiming to have come up with any of this on my own.  Also, no clue if it's going to work or not since we're still in the middle of the process, but I wanted to keep track of how things are going.

Several months ago Anne's Grammy bought her a Disney Princess potty to keep at her house just to introduce Anne to it.  By some miracle, Anne (who was only about 18 months old at the time) sat on it and actually peed so I got excited and got Anne her own Dora potty (that she picked out) for our house, as well as one of those little seats you can hang on the side of a real toilet and pop into the seat when needed.  The Dora potty may have been a waste of money as it quickly became nothing more than a step stool to get to the sink easier as Anne refused to even sit on it for the most part.  But, I kept encouraging her to try it and kept talking to her about using the potty.  I think over the past few months there may have been 3-4 total instances of Anne actually going in the little potty either at Grammy's house our ours, but we did get her to sit on it occasionally.

With her second birthday rapidly approaching and knowing that Anne would be moving up to the toddler classroom at school soon, where they potty train on real mini-sized toilets, I started looking around for information on how to go about doing this.  Originally I wanted to spend the week of our vacation in early July trying to train her, but our schedule filled up quickly with social activities and I knew I wouldn't have the time; also, her school wasn't planning on moving her up until August.  During this time I came across a potty training method on Pinterest that involves 3 days of extensive training that involves letting them run around naked and using big kid undies and you pretty much don't leave the house for 3 days because all you do is focus on potty training.  It also encouraged using "potty prizes", one bag for pee and one bag for poop, to help encourage them to use the potty.  There was more to it but that's the general gist.



So I found a three day weekend at the end of July and set it aside.  Then, in preparation for the Potty Marathon, two weeks before the Potty Marathon weekend I bought Anne a couple of books about potty training for kids (Princess of the Potty, which I highly recommend because it's very detailed and teaches kids the whole method, including sometimes waiting and nothing happening, and accidents; there's a Prince version too) and an Elmo book that plays "potty songs" (classic kids songs with new words about using the potty).


We read Princess of the Potty when we're hanging out and we sing the potty songs while she's sitting on the potty.   I started making a more concerted effort to get her to sit on the potty, and was pleasantly surprised when she preferred the pop-in seat on the real toilet (less mess for me, yay!).  

Since we were trying to put her on the potty at home, I asked the school to start working with her and they decided to go ahead and move her up to the toddler class.  That seems to be working out fine as Anne was already familiar with the room and the teachers in there.

This weekend we bought her "big kid undies" and a whole bunch of $1 potty prizes (thank you, Target, for your $1 bins).  I separated some of the bigger, cooler items into a poop prize bag and some other things like stickers and glow bracelets into the pee prize bag.  I left out a big sheet of smiley stickers to use when she at least tries to go; if she succeeds she'll get a bigger prize.

A note about big kid undies:  ignore the weight reference on the package, manufacturers are idiots.  According to the size chart my 30 lb daughter should be in a 4T, but those would be huge on her as the 2T/3T size fits perfectly with a little bit of room for growing.  Buy one pack and try them on your kid before settling on a size.



I started out giving her stickers if she at least tried, and I'm still doing that, but at first she didn't really know what to do with the stickers (and I didn't really want them plastered all over my house).  So I bought a poster board and hung it up in her room where she can reach it, and now if she gets a sticker I tell her to go put it on her "Potty Board" and she happily runs in her room and sticks it on the poster.  Also, the smiley stickers are hanging out of her reach but in sight in the bathroom, so when she sees them she knows what they're for.  She's also very excited about the prize bags but has only earned one bracelet so far, which she may or may not have bamboozled me out of.  Not sure if she actually went or not, but after a day of mostly refusing to sit on the potty, I was so happy that she initiated on her own that I let her have it anyway.

Had a quick test run this weekend with the undies because when we tried a pair on Anne to make sure they fit okay, she didn't want to take them off.  However, after 3 pee accidents and then pooping in them, which I'm sure felt absolutely awful, she asked for her diaper back.   I was happy she tried them out at all, but also happy she was okay with going back to her diaper because I wasn't ready yet to send her to school in undies this week.  She's not ready for that yet.  Hopefully *next* Monday she will be in undies and we can ditch the diapers except for at night.  Not doing night training until I feel like she has a good grasp on daytime trips.

This adventure is as confusing for me as it probably is for her because some days she does just fine with taking trips to the potty and then some days she will refuse it completely all day and then initiate on her own 3 times around bath/bedtime.  The refusing is frustrating for me.  The one constant that she seems to be good at is right after her bath.  I tell her  "no pee in the tub" so I think she actually tries to hold it; she always wants to get on the potty immediately after getting out of the water whether she's gotten dry or not.  These are the few times I've actually heard it and know she was productive.  And I think she's beginning to really notice when her diaper is wet and that she doesn't like it because sometimes she will tell me "Potty!", and her diaper will be wet even though she doesn't want to sit very long on the potty.  I don't know if we're just not making it to the bathroom in time, or if she's telling me after she goes instead of before.

I'm just really hoping that by Sunday of this weekend, she's basically gotten it down.  I really don't want to have to keep her in diapers, but if she doesn't make any real progress I'll have to.  Guess we'll see!