Tuesday, April 24, 2012

potty trained . . . kind of

For those wondering about the wonderful potty training going on, it's going good! We'll . . . as good as can be expected when your two year old is afraid of any adult size toilet and will only use his uncomfortable green mini one that he carries triumphantly in the air letting its contents swish out each side after he has used it successfully. We still have accidents now and then, but he gets the basics and I'm fine with that for right now. (He actually seemed to get the basics within the first week, however, we've had relatively little progress since then). Our method? We might have bribed him with being able to watch those 4 minutes LDS bible movies as long as he was sitting on the potty (he had been willing to sit down, but not willing to wait). We might have withheld presents of stickers from his Oma for a couple of months back to use as a prize now (from us). We might also have done (and continue to do) a celebratory dance for about 3 minutes afterwards and yes, we bothered about every relative we have with bragging phone calls. That said, we have't really pushed it and let him decide if he wanted a diaper or underpants. We also have insisted on him wearing a diaper when sleeping because I'm not up for that much laundry (the whole point of this is to make it easier on us). I think the biggest asset, however, has been wood floors as I haven't had to pretend I wasn't annoyed when he had an accident, because with wooden floors it's easier to clean an accident off the floor than to wrestle him down for a diaper change. Anyway, I haven't bought more diapers from my original declaration, but I'll probably be investing in some pull-ups soon. Ohhweee!!

6 comments:

Ruth said...

good job!

llcall said...

Awesome! I think that we would do something more along the lines of what you're doing if we had wood floors...I never even thought about how problematic can be until having a child!

Mary said...

Good work. If you want to come visit and potty train Nathan for me I wouldn't mind.

Lori said...

I love that your potty-training bribe is LDS Bible videos. What a religious child Christian is going to be. :)

At my parents' house it was always chocolate chips.

Nicole said...

I liked the tips in Potty wise, I think its also in the back of the toddler wise book. Not that we followed it, just nice to have those moments of encouragement to keep going. We were very laid back, though. Our kids luckily made it through the night before the day, who knows why. But you really just have to wait until they can actually pull their pants up and down independently and know how to get to the potty in time. The best way was to let them run around in underwear or naked for a while (yes, thanks to wood floors, we'll see if that helps with Chloe this time around!) At about 3 years and 1 mos after a trip home for both our kids, they magically were potty trained. We still have accidents now and then years later, but I guess that's all part of growing up:). Good luck and don't worry, it all comes with age!

Nicole said...

And trips out do get easier. For me it was easier to have kids in a diaper/pull up then have to interrupt everything whether driving or mid grocery trip, to find a potty. Perhaps that and our travels kept them from getting there sooner. I like what you said, this is to make things easier on us, not more work:). And it always seems that the time to potty train comes just as another baby does!