Because I am a glutton for punishment and perhaps have seen too many episodes of Dr. Phil about facing your fears head-on, I decided that it made perfect sense to start potty training our not-yet-two-year-old this past weekend (I can sense those of you with older children are rolling your eyes at this point, while those of you with younger children are gasping to your husbands "ohmygod, do we have to do this soon?").
Let me preface all of this with the fact that I have been dreading potty training since I learned that women give birth to babies. I have desperately wished that there was some sort of "boot camp" like where you send your dogs away to get them trained and when they come home - voila! - they are magically potty trained. I have made these statements out loud in the presence of others in the hope that some kind soul would just volunteer to do the job for me. Apparently my grandmother potty trained my sister and I; when I got that little nugget of information, I eagerly eyed my mother with hope and desperation: certainly that meant that SHE would potty train my children for me, right? Pay it forward, and all that. No such luck, it turns out she is actually completely useless when it comes to the details and any advice on this topic since she has actually never done it herself. *sigh*
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| We watched this every day |
So, as is typical with most things in my life, since I was freaking out about it, I decided to just pull the trigger and jump in headfirst, dragging my poor, accommodating child & husband along with me. See, here's the thing: EJ is a smart cookie, and for the past few months she has been showing all the signs that she was ready (as per all the potty training literature and blogs I could find - whatever that is worth). But along with being a smart cookie, she is also getting increasingly more stubborn and opinionated. I was worried that if we waited any longer (you know, until she was the age that it seems most people PT their kids), we would have missed our window. And rather than having a smart, sweet, curious child who is still fairly eager to please and excited about things we are excited about, we would get locked into a power struggle with a strong-willed little girl who has the stubbornness and pride of Omar and I combined. All this made total sense in my head, which is why I declared to Omar last week that this weekend was IT, he needed to cancel his golf plans and take Monday off work because we were going to go through three days of hell (together) and get this kid trained.
Our plan of attack was based on the "Three Day Potty Training Method" which has been circulating the internet in several forms for many years. I have a bunch of friends who have used it successfully, and to me 3 days of hell sounded a lot better than trying to drag it out over several weeks or months using more traditional methods. The basic gist is that you get rid of all diapers, go straight into underwear, and let them run around semi-naked for 3 days while they learn their body signals. And by "learning their body signals" I mean letting them pee all over themselves and everything around them until they figure out how much that sucks. Yep. That's how it works. In theory, by the end of day 3, they should understand and be able to alert you in time to rush them to the toilet. I was dubious but also committed.
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| The Consumerism of Society also extends to little girls panties. |
So, what does one need for this magical 3-day trial? Well, for one: underwear. It is supposed to be a big deal for the child to go pick out their own special "big girl" panties, so off we went to Target. There is a surprisingly large selection of little girl underwear, but they all had a single theme in common: characters. I *hate* stuff with characters on it. You will never see my child in a Cinderella t-shirt or carrying a Little Mermaid backpack. But apparently the Powers That Be decided that was the only possible decoration for little girl underwear. And EJ went nuts when I told her she could pick out her favorites. Before I knew what happened, we had no less than 6 packs of panties in the cart. All with Disney Princesses (I mean, how many princesses does Disney actually have? Was Cinderella actually a princess? I thought she was the maid. And wasn't the Little Mermaid a....mermaid?) or Minnie Mouse or Dora on them. Gag me with a spoon. She doesn't even know who any of them are. The only show she watches is Sesame Street, and the only character she knows or cares about is Elmo. So, in a moment of desperation, I actually did try to find some Elmo underwear for her. But that was only available on boy underwear (which is an entirely different peeve of mine about assumed gender roles in kid-related junk, but I'll save that for another post). So, needless to say, we are now the proud owners of 21 pairs of little girl panties with princesses, Minnie Mouse, and Hello Kitty all over them. *sigh*
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| Yep, it sings & dances! |
The second item is a potty. You are also supposed to let the child pick the potty, so off we went to Babies R Us. We ended up with the one that looks the most like a real toilet, which also just so happens have realistic sound effects (yes, sounds effects) and plays a ridiculously silly celebration song when they actually pee in it. Don't ask me how that works, Omar said something about "connecting the circuits" but I am just putting it down to more potty-god magic.
Finally, you need a "reward." What they really mean here is "bribe" but they are too PC to call it that. We chose M&Ms based a story that my friend Kristen told me: her mother claims that all it took to potty train her sister Nancy was a single bag of M&Ms. Her mom is pretty awesome and seems to know what she is doing, so I figured: Why re-invent the wheel?
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| Mmmmmm chocolate. Who wouldn't pee in a potty for some chocolate? |
So, now we were set. I had Omar roll up all the rugs in our back room so that it was only hardwoods and tile floors we would be dealing with. We spent the week leading up to the Big Day watching the Elmo Potty Time dvd and reading various potty training books. We talked about how she was going to be a big girl and wear big-girl panties. I primed the steam mop and pulled out the case of Clorox wipes. I felt like we were priming for battle.
Day #1:
We put on her Cinderella panties and explained again that she was a Big Girl and would be using the potty from now on. I gave her a sippy cup that was half apple juice, half water in the hopes that she would drink a lot and thus provide us with more "learning opportunities." She has never had juice before, and she guzzled that stuff like I used to be able to guzzle beer. And it worked. In the first 90 minutes she went through 7 pairs of panties. At that point we decided to introduce the "reward" and - miracle of miracles - she only had one more accident before nap time. She seemed to really be getting it. During her nap, Omar and I both also napped, it is exhausting having to keep your eyes on your kid every second, waiting for any sign that she is about to release the deluge.
After her nap she regressed a bit and I think we ended up going through another 5 or 6 pairs of panties. But the rewards were definitely working, by the end of the day she was claiming she needed to go potty (and even straining to get a few drops out) just so she could get an M&M. My child has also never had chocolate, so between the M&Ms and the juice, my take away from this day was that she really likes sugar.
Day #2:
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| TOUCHDOWN! (At least, that's how we felt whenever we would make it to the potty on time) |
She started off really strong, I think we only had one or two accidents before her nap. After she got up, we had a rash of accidents but she did seem to be getting it, I think those were more because she (or we) were distracted and not because she didn't understand. By the end of the day we had gone through 7 pairs of panties.
Day #3:
I'll be honest, I was beginning to worry if she was going to actually totally figure this out. Plus, Omar was supposed to go back to work today (despite me begging him to take the day off) and I was really dreading having to do it all by myself. Omar had been amazing with everything, she is very daddy-focused these days and he is fantastic at getting her excited and being silly with her to celebrate. He is also a lot more patient than I am. But the potty-gods must have been watching, because he woke up not feeling well and decided to work from home. Hooray!
She did great. She went pee on the potty a bunch of times. She had 2 instances where she started to go in her panties, stopped, told me, and we rushed to the potty so she could finish. Our only real "situation" of the day was a serious one involving #2 that I won't go into details about. I am currently on my second glass of wine trying to wipe that memory from my brain. But I never expected #2 to be as simple as #1, especially since she typically only does #2 once a day, normally while sleeping (for which we are still putting her in a pull-up), so it's not like we would get a lot of practice with that.
I am hopeful that tomorrow will be even better, and by the time she goes back to school on Wednesday she will be good enough that her teachers won't send me hate mail/poisoned apples (see, now I have Disney princesses on the brain).
Some Items Of Note:
Remember the cool singing potty? Yeah, well, she wasn't actually interested in using that. Nope, my Miss Independent was only interested in using a true Big Girl Potty. So we scrapped the little one and got these cool toilet seats from Home Depot that incorporate a kid-sized seat into the regular one. Brilliant!
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| Home Depot makes potties an engineer can appreciate. |
The 3-day method does seem to work pretty well if you follow it carefully. We have varied from some of their recommendations to fit our lifestyle, the most obvious of which is using pull-ups during naps and nighttime. Their method has you going cold turkey for everything. For us, that just wasn't practical (or, we are too lazy - whatever). EJ is still in a crib, where I fully intend to keep her until her legs are completely poking out the ends and even then it will be questionable only if she seems *really* uncomfortable, and/or she leaves for college. There is NO WAY I was going to conquer both potty training and the switch to a real bed at the same time. Sorry. So, since she can't get out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and since I am positive she can't make it through the night without going, we decided to
do the pull-ups. As for the naps - that's probably more laziness on our part. But I'll be honest: we just needed a break mid-day. I'm ok with that and I will own it.
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| My (too) smart girl realized this toy potty was for...toys. Thus Ariel was subjected to it's maniacal singing. |
EJ is in school 3 days a week and she will be the first in her class (early 2s) to try potty training. I'll be honest: if her teachers weren't so amazing and supportive, I wouldn't have done it this early. But they are amazing and supportive and completely on board. I hope at the end of this week they still feel this way.
I didn't decide to do this so early so I could pat myself on the back that she was already potty trained, I honestly think it is a way bigger PITA to deal with taking them to the bathroom every 45 minutes for the next however long (weeks? months? YEARS???) rather than just changing a diaper 4 times a day. But I do think that she was ready and that by doing it now we are avoiding a potentially much more difficult process down the road. I may be wrong. Heck, I probably AM wrong, I have never done this before and have no idea what I am doing. But it felt right and she seems to be getting it, so I am just going to keep running with it and hope we have success. I'll report back in a week or two and let you know if that is the case. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!
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| World's cutest potty-trainer. |
