potty training

Voila! We're on our way. It's only been about two weeks, and we're well on our way towards potty training. Here's an email that I just sent out to my long-suffering mom's group. Oh, some background. Last Feb, Simon had both peed and pooped in the potty. Then we went for an interview at Peninsula School down here in Menlo Park, where you have to be potty trained before you can attend. On the way back, I said "well, Simon, if you'd like to go to this school, we'll have to stop wearing diapers." Ahem. Well, he immediately stopped doing anything in the potty, and didn't start again until ... December? I guess every kid is different, and with ours, a certain type of pressure doesn't exactly galvanize. Here is the long story. I'm SURE that you all have nothing better to do than read about bodily functions today . Today Simon pooped in the potty again. yay! For all of you not necessarily to this stage, I'll tell you what worked for us. About 1.5 weeks ago, I started talking about how we didn't have very many diapers and so we were going to wear underwear, and please keep them dry. I deliberately didn't make a big deal about it because Simon seemed to get pressured whenever we did any of the "rah rah" stuff beforehand. It was fine. He was praised a lot for peeing in the potty, and then at night, or when we went somewhere, we'd put a diaper on him. Then, last week, he went potty after school and took his diaper off. I left it off and he went all evening with no problem. Day before yesterday, I put the underpants on, and, since we were outside, I took the potty chair outside. We peed in it, on the front porch (classy, huh?), and then I left it there. We tried pooping, and then I left him alone and let him just pull up his pants and do other stuff when it didn't work. No pressure. He pooped by himself and called me and showed me/told me about it. We filmed it for daddy. Yesterday, we went to San Francisco all day without diapers. (!) We also had about $55 worth of Dim Sum (chinese tea dumplings -- wonderful stuff) with Simon's stomach fuller than I think I've ever seen it, which concerned us on the ride back home. He did pretty well on the four different toilets that we tried during the day, but, like I said, drew the line at office depot and had an accident. Today, he wouldn't sit on the potty for his father. We're finding that at his age, he's resistant to the "just sit until something happens" approach. If he doesn't want to sit he doesn't want to. His dad tried to get him to sit on the potty longer this morning, and Simon said that he wanted his diaper back, so we backed off. Actually, today was hilarious. Mom got to "sleep in," and at about 9:45, Dad came into my room, sat down, and said: "Well, he threw up all over me, fell off of his changing table, and peed all over the floor." I tried not to laugh, thinking "hey! Glad I missed it!" At any rate, he'd been on his bed and had tried to get to the bathroom but only made it to the bottom of his ladder. So I moved the potty chair in with him. When we had breakfast, I moved the potty chair in with us. He tried about six times to go to the bathroom and I just said 'OK' and worked around him. After breakfast, I told him that sometimes your body says "ok, it's time to go" and you had to go right away, so I wanted to put his potty chair in with him and where would he be. "In the bedroom," he said, and then he said, for the seventh time this morning, "I have to poop." "OK," I said, and left him. I was in the other room when I heard running feet and heard "I did it." Good Lord, he'd started on his potty chair, then run to the bathroom and gotten it into the big potty! He was very proud of himself, but for a minute, as I was trying to figure out where he was, I thought "uh oh, where?" At any rate, it's happening, and it feels as though the more relaxed and empowering I am (we are), the better it works. Oh yes, one last thing. My little half-New Yorker looked at me before going potty and said "mommy, if I go poop, may I please have a piece of candy?" I had NEVER told him that this was the case, but I dithered a bit and his daddy and I figure 'ok.' Sheesh. What a negotiater. It's pretty neat, though. I NEVER thought that this would happen. (But then again, when he was a week late, I never thought that he'd come, either, which proves that I'm not prescient.) Oh, btw. He just turned 3.5. And I cannot think of one single thing that pushed him in this direction. It seems that he just decided that he liked the underpants more than the diaper.