Chebbles and I ought to care more about potty training. After all, most of the kids in playgroup are sporting underpants, and dutifully march to the bathroom to do their "business."
We, however, just can't get into it.
True, she'll pee on the potty. She's had the trick down for months now. If we time it just right, she'll pee on the potty. But whatever, it's nothing consistent. She has never been able to predict when she'll pee or poop. Sometimes she just announces to me, with a look of surprise on her face, "Hey! I'm peeing!"
And she pees into her Princess Pull-Up and I change it eventually and we all move on with our lives.
At her 2-year doctor's appointment (six months ago), Dr. M. recommended that I get cracking on the potty training, so that we would have it mastered by the time the baby came. Motivated by him, I enacted a rule whereby she gets:
* One mini-marshmallow for sitting on the potty
* Two mini-marshmallows for sitting on the potty and peeing
* Three mini-marshmallows for sitting on the potty and pooping
And she's psyched about the mini-marshmallows, but not enough to master her bodily functions. It's ultimately not worth the trade-off, and I understand that. It's easier to just keep on playing than to stop everything and jam into the potty.
So she kind of forgot about the marshmallows and the potty, and so did I, and now we have this little trove of stale mini-marshmallows festering in the bathroom closet.
Lately, she has been slightly intrigued by the potty. We're not making a big deal out of it, but twice now she's woken up from her nap and peed in the potty. And once she actually pooped in it. And Hub-D and I told her how proud we are, and we doled out the stale mini-marshmallows and let her wear Disney Princess underwear for a few hours thereafter.
But I just don't have any sense of urgency, so to speak, about potty training. If she stops using the potty tomorrow, I won't really care. It's easier for ME for her to pee in her diapers when we're out and about. And muuuuch easier than cleaning off actual cotton underpants (my plan in case of errant underwear poops? throw them away...sorry Snow White).
I have no interest in cleaning up pools of piss in my house, so I'm just casually coasting past the challenges of potty training. Sure, I have a twinge of embarrassment at dance class, where most of the other kids are in underpants, using the potty before and after class. But that twinge is completely obliterated by the marvelous convenience of just removing the wet Princess Pull-Up and chucking it in the trash -- instead of having my kid interact with a public toilet.
So whatever, Baby V is going through about 10-15 diapers a day, all of them filled with yogurty golden newborn poo. What's another 3-5 diapers on The Chebs? Yeah, we've got two Diaper Genies filled to the brim here at our house. Any questions? Because really, whatever.
9 comments:
Do your best not to fret...she'll get there. I can almost guarantee she will not be in diapers when she heads off to High School :-)
Chebs does everything in her own time. When she's ready she will do it, and probably with a formal announcement. I hear ya on the convenience thing - diapers isn't really a bad thing until they're like....5
I was extremely happy with the outcome of not stressing about potty training with N. For a short while, I pushed it, and it wasn't worth the battles. In the end, when he was ready, he just went for it. And he had only a handful of TINY accidents before he completely mastered it. I hope the same for you!
Definitely best to chill about potty training -- especially with a wee one around! One day, probably less than 24 hours after you have shelled out big bucks for a MEGA-carton of diapers (one too big to easily store until V is ready for it), the spirit will, um...move her.
And then you'll just have one more fancy hat around.
kp
I had suspected this would be the best approach for us also even though I have been getting pressure from the G-Ma's about hurrying up and doing it. Wee One has always done things in her own time and seems to be just fine. I like the convenience of throwing pull ups away too. Once in an anxious state I googled and read an article about "Diaper Dependence Syndrome." I freaked for a moment then snapped to my senses and shut off the computer.
I'm so glad I'm not alone on this topic. And I love Diaper Dependence Syndrome. Chebbles and I totally have that!
My mother claims I was potty-trained at 18 months----"Whatevs..." *rolling eyes like a petulant teen*
So basically I was going to wait til C was in high school just to spite my mom.
One day her preschool teacher said she was ready and I decided a bribe was in order. I too dreaded the pee and poop on our freshly refinished hardwood floors but decided that this was just another unpleasant aspect of parenthood and I just had to mommy-up.
We purchased Beaty and the Beast and she couldn't watch it until she pooped on the potty. It happened that night...followed by a series of M&M bribes. We haven't looked back and I can count the accidents (since Sept 1) on 1 hand. It's worth it. Trust me.
and kids are messy...it's really not that bad.
ND---mom of one of the potty-trained monkeys in dance class... :)
I'm afraid to say she takes after her Aunt E. who, in spite of an insatiable desire for candy, was not particularly motivated by M&Ms, and was not potty trained until around 3 years of age, after a summer in which I let her run around without any diapers (or underpants) and a fall of play group during which I herded her into the bathroom with whichever other child was using the potty ("Don't you want to go in and watch K. go pottie?").
And, yes, you are wise to keep the kid in diapers as long as possible. As soon as Aunt E. was potty-trained, we began the search for bathrooms at the most inconvenient moments, including a few improvised roadside locations,one along a canal in North Carolina in which I noticed a big old water moccasin leisurely swimming along the edge just as we were finishing up.
The potty training of Aunt E. was especially frustrating for me after successfully training you with a sugar-free "star chart" at the age of 2. Too bad that star chart stopped working at around age 5. It was all downhill from there for everything else!
Grandma R.
I don't know if you ever read the Game Theorist blog (gametheorist.blogspot.com). It's written by an economist who's also a parent. Here's what happened when they brought toilet-training incentives to their household.
"Our daughter realised that she could successfully get a [chocolate] frog [candy] by simply waiting. If you sit on the toilet long enough something will happen. And so she did this, for hours and hours on end. Now we let this go for a while in the hope she would get more control and feeling about her own bodily functions. When she didn't appear to tire of these activities, we changed the reward. She was only allowed to sit on the toilet for short (!) half hour bursts."
Full entry at:
http://gametheorist.blogspot.com/2003/01/toilet-training-and-incentives-child.html
Now that's a patient toddler.
Post a Comment