gabe came into our room early this morning (somewhere before 6 AM) said his usual "rise and shine it's morning time" and ran off to play in the playroom until one of us could drag ourselves out of bed to start the coffee and sit with gabe. instead of the typical noises of cars and trains in the playroom, we heard "i need some help please!" at increasing decibel levels. joe ran out to the kitchen to see what was the matter and found gabe holding himself asking to go outside. joe quickly opened the backdoor where gabe ran over to the tree, dropped his pants, and promptly relieved himself. in yet another attempt of potty training, i told gabe yesterday that he could pee outside. gabe took this very seriously and for the past 24 hours has ONLY gone to the bathroom outside (yes, both kinds).
it feels like we have been in a potty training stage for about 18 months. this is not a joke. before makena was even born we blindly followed our pediatricians suggestion that most parents wait too long to potty train and many kids are ready around 18-20 months. i don't know why we thought it would be a good idea to start this process before another child is about to be born, but we gave it a shot with fairly good success and then makena's arrival, unsurprisingly, was too much a distraction for anyone to be interested in the potty anymore. there have been many attempts since then, all unsuccessful. it feels like we have tried everything, read everything, tried every incentive and bribery. we even tried the "when you are big then you can wear big boy underwear" to which gabe replied "well, i'm just going to be little". so even though right now it feels like we are training a puppy and not a little boy, we still count it a success.
and if anyone has advice on how to convince a boy to use the potty INSIDE the house i would welcome any and all suggestions.
5 comments:
How funny! I bought Natalie "big gilr" panties yesterday and she proceeded to have two accidents...we'll try another day.
You might remember me saying this but... here it goes again... I don't believe in potty training! And my life rocks because of it! My mom (mother of 6) never potty trained her kids. She just let each child get to that point of understanding it. That doesn't mean that she didn't encourage each child... but nothing beyond "do you want to wear big girl/boy pants today?"... I did this with Leah, and she consistently said "no" until a few months ago... and then, viola! One Monday she said "no?" with this look on her face that meant "yes..." so we went upstairs, got big girl pants on, and never looked back. It's been 4.5 months and she's only had 2 accidents. With Gabe, I might try a rule... maybe backtrack, and say "mommy was wrong... there are bottom-feeders (ouch!)outside... so maybe we should only go inside now unless there's an emergency".
I hope one part of this ramble helps you.
love you all!
becca
becca -Thanks for your words of wisdom and encouragement! These past few days have gone much better with no accidents (and no outside potties!). I think he just needed to experiment for a few days and then was ready to make the transition to the inside potty. While a little disgusting, the whole pooping outside thing ended up being great because it helped to convince gabe that poop can go in the potty and not just his diaper. We’d been having a month long debate that poop and pee can go in the potty, he would emphatically insist that only pee goes in the potty. It’s amazing what you can argue with a near 3 year old about!
Anyways, it was great seeing you last week – thanks so much for stopping by the pool after a long drive and tired kids from the beach. I have loved keeping up with all the developments in your family on your blog – thanks for keeping it updated.
Take care! anne
leigh - all i can say is good luck, it may take several tries with several months in between tries, and ultimately you have no control over it! we feel that we have finally reached a point of not turning back to diapers and i must admit that it feels extremely reassuring to have concrete evidence that we at least are making progress in attempting to raise a functioning member of society. most other aspects of parenting cause me to question if we were really cut out for such a job! I hope snuggles is still working out and you have had many peaceful nights! :)
I know this is a older post but Thank You! I googled Potty Training SOS and this was the first thing that came up. We are having a really really hard time potty training and your story made me laugh so hard. I really needed to laugh after cleaning 4 major accidents out of my carpet today.
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