Potty Training....1, 2, 3???

Watching you tube videos while waiting for pee pee and poo poo

We've been busy potty training around here. I have to apologize in advance because I wrote most of this for my own future reference. Sorry if it is boring or overly informative.

I have to say that I was pretty freaked out about potty training. Everyone I talked to, every website I visited made it sound like potty training was a very hard, difficult, chinese water torture kind of experience.  So I prepared myself for the worst.

I envisioned the lows and remembered Peter's ability to be like this:

DON'T TAKE MY PICTURE!! 

And then I would remind myself that most of the time he is more like this:

And I decided it couldn't be THAT bad, could it?

I did my internet research and settled on a book by the Ezzos, Potty Training 123. I relied on the Ezzo wisdom a lot for Babywise, so I figured they probably knew what they were talking about for Potty Training as well.

The difficult mental block for me was rewarding behavior with tangible things. I have spent the last 3 years trying to not parent my children by behavior modification, but parenting the heart. What would it be like to reward him with a prize for going to the bathroom? Would he expect to get rewards in other facets of his life?

Fortunately, 3 year olds don't have these deep, analytical thoughts, so this was not a problem.

I discovered that potty training is just as much about training the parents as it is the child. For 3 years I coasted--changing diapers when I wanted to, didn't really pay attention completely to the timing of his bowel movements, and just enjoyed the freedom of being able to go places without having to worry about where a toilet was.

Honestly, if they made diapers for 6 year olds, I often thought I would hang on till then. But...they do cost a lot of money. And now that we are a little further into the whole thing, I have to say it is very nice to only have to change 1 child's poopy diapers.

Anyways, I read the Ezzo's book and began to mentally prepare for the process. I had already put the potty seat out in view for about a month--I wanted Peter to get used to it--but didn't want to push it.

A few days after I had skimmed the Ezzo's book, Peter AMAZED me. One Monday evening before bed, he told me he wanted to sit on his potty seat. He had done this many times before with no results. I wasn't really expecting any--I had just want him to experience sitting on the potty. Anyways, I had him sit down on the potty seat and then left him and Matthew to hang out.

Minutes later, I hear him say, "Mommy!! Mommmmeeeeeee!!! I did a POO POO in the POTTEEEE". Whaaaaa? Surely, he could not be serious. I thought he was just making it up. But sure enough, when I got into the bathroom there was no doubt! I made a big deal about it and jumped up and down and screamed and gave him a lot of hugs. This is not my normal behavior so I am sure he thought I had lost my brain. But I think he also thought it was pretty cool to see Mommy go crazy over poo.

We called Omi and Gramps, one set of cousins (the others were traveling, otherwise they would have been contacted as well), and Nana. Peter insisted on talking to each of the 3 cousins. Josh (11) cracked me up because he was definitely the most enthusiastic responder.

The "random poop" incident pretty much forced me to cancel my plans for the week and focus on potty training. It caught me so off guard, it was quite crazy. I had to go out and buy a bigger potty seat because the one we had was not doing the job. Peter weighs 45 lbs now! I found something that had a bigger "bowl".

The book suggests a whole process of introducing a bear or a doll to the child and using the bear as a prop for what the child will be doing. It is pretty crazy when you think about having to teach someone how to use the bathroom facilities. There are so many different things to remember!

Anyway, we got Mr. Bear and put on some Rex/Toy Story underpants. The night before we started potty training, I introduced Peter to Mr. Bear and explained that the next day we would be learning how to use the potty. I explained that he would be getting treats like Chocolate Milk, Jelly Belly Jelly Beans, and "Special Juice" (Capri Sun) all day. He was super excited to begin the process when he was falling asleep. It was really sweet. He wanted to sleep with Mr. Bear. Very funny because Mr. Bear had been floating around our house for months and with the Rex/Toy Story underpants on he suddenly appeared to be "new." Weeks later, I let Peter wear the Rex underpants and Peter said, "oh, Mr. Bear is going to be so sad." I tried hard not to laugh.

So, we began potty training on a Wednesday. I wanted to start far enough from Sunday--we HAVE to go to church--so that hopefully by Sunday he would be comfortable enough that going to potty at church would not be an ordeal. I was hoping that the stretch from Wednesday to Sunday would be enough. I also had to take my work schedule into consideration.

As previously stated, he was SO excited to begin when he woke up that morning. He wanted to eat breakfast immediately so that he could start. I began loading him up on chocolate milk around 745. One of the things that I had read was that it takes longer for milk to go through your system than it does juice. If I had to do it over I would not have used chocolate milk. I would have just bought a lot of fun yummy juices and gotten him to drink those.

The book is really into rewarding the child for staying dry and clean, instead for using the potty. Initially, I think this is a great tactic. It gives you something to reward the child for doing and they feel proud of their accomplishment of staying dry and clean. The book is also great because it gives you a checklist of what to look for in your child to determine if they are ready to begin potty training. A lot of it is developmental. And I like how they explain that this is not a moral issue. The authors emphasized that there is "no right way to learn how to use the potty." Kind of weird coming from people that are so passionate about scheduling babies...but whatever. It was a good book.

I kept asking Peter if he was dry and clean--probably a little too often--and kept giving him Jelly Beans as a reward. By 9am, he was tired of getting rewards for staying dry and clean and didn't want them anymore.

I was discouraged. It felt like he was never going to go pee.

By 10am, there was still no pee. He spent some time in the office watching some you tube videos with our office manager....I had read that sometimes children get into what they are doing and just forget to stop and use the bathroom....so of course, he had an accident and went pee in the office. Oops.

I was really discouraged at that point and was ready to give up. I thought maybe Peter was just not ready. I told him to come into the bedroom and we were just going to put a diaper back on. He got really sad and said he didn't want to, he wanted to keep his underpants on.

So we kept them on. And about 10 minutes later, he told me he needed to go pee. We went to the potty and he did everything great! We decided to teach him to sit and pee rather than stand. It is working out well so far. I think Matthew might be another story. He already likes to stand up in the bathtub and pee. He's so weird sometimes. :)

After that first time, things kind of just started snowballing. He kept telling me that he had to go pee. Eventually, the jelly beans were not that inspiring to him, so I had to change it with ice cream. Then the ice cream got replaced with legos. One of the points the book makes is that parents often err because they are not finding the thing that motivates their children enough. I definitely took that into consideration and tried to find things that would keep the excitement going.

We also used a potty chart the first couple of days just to add to the excitement. He liked putting stickers on there each time he used the potty. 

Peter's Potty Chart

Potty training was training for me too in that I had to start thinking about when was the last time he drank fluids, when was the last time he peed, etc. From what I can tell, it takes him about 2 hours to process liquids--sometimes even more. And he seems to have figured out how to hold it. We have gone to the beach several times without incident....

Not to get too graphic, but he was holding the poop in I think at the beginning of potty training. This created a really lame situation. He was afraid to go poop on the potty but because he was witholding the poops ended up being really big. Thankfully I already had Matthew on Miralax for some other issues, so I knew to just give Peter a teaspoon. He is still on it now....not sure when I will stop giving it to him.

Also not sure when to stop giving him the rewards. I am hoping I will just sense when he has become more and more comfortable using the potty and slowly wean him off the rewards, which should be really soon.

And nope, he didn't expect to get treats for other aspects of his life. :)

One of the hardest things is getting him to use the potty before we go somewhere. I don't want using the potty to be a discipline issue, so I do struggle with what to do when I ask him to sit on the potty and he doesn't want to. At this point I have just decided that if he says he doesn't have to go, I need to trust him.

So that's it. I was exhausted after the first day was over. It was SO mentally draining and stressful the first day not knowing what to expect AND not really knowing when he was going to pee. I knew I wasn't alone when I watched my mom and Mike interact with the whole process. It is REALLY unnerving in the beginning. Kind of like taking the training wheels off a bike or something.

I remember heading into the weekend thinking, "we have 1 child that is no longer wearing diapers." So weeirrrrdd!! I think it was mainly a lot for me to mentally process because I had not planned to potty train that week. And nope, we didn't train him for the nighttime stuff yet. That felt like too much.

Glad to pretty much have this milestone behind us (ha ha...no pun intended).