Charlotte has been interested in the potty for a while now, at least 2.5 months. She knows what it is, knows what you are supposed to do on it, knows how to flush, and knows what toilet paper is for.
A month ago she started to talk about it a lot - so one evening we headed to Target and bought a potty of her very own. I made a big deal about it. Brought it home, took it out of the box, and got it all set up for her in the downstairs bathroom. She immediately wanted to use it. No joke, she sat down and peed on the potty that very first night.
I didn't get too excited about it. I refused to get my hopes up that we would soon be done with diapers - the child can't even take her own pants off yet. Over the next month, she sat on the potty a few more times, and would actually go in the potty. Whenever she went in the potty I would act like a crazy person, jumping up and down and praising the living daylights out of her - constantly saying "GOOD GIRL". So, now when she goes, she twists her little body around to look in the potty to see if she really went, and says "GOOD GIRL".
Then this last weekend at her grandparents house she asked to sit on the potty and then peed on the potty. Judd's mom called me somewhat surprised at this development. I just informed her that Charlotte knew what it was for, and would occasionally go, but that we weren't really trying to potty train.
But, I still didn't get excited about all of this - I felt like I would just be setting myself up for disappointment. She's just teasing me.
I picked her up from school on Monday and her teacher said they had some very exciting news. Charlotte had peed on the potty at school! They were really excited about it and I got the feeling that they thought I should begin this new potty training chapter.
Ok, now I'm getting excited. Is she ready? Do we need to start this? I'm terrified. What should I do? What books should I read? Please help!
For now I'm just taking it easy, if she wants to go on the potty she can try, if not, I'm cool with that too. I don't even ask her if she wants to go, I wait until she tells me. Those who have walked this path before me - any advice is appreciated.
(Oh, and shameless plug - I posted some pictures of my first Holiday Mini session over on the photography blog - I still have 2 spaces left for Nov. 8th in Suwanee!)
Bits of Life for Us
5 years ago
4 comments:
I'm with you -- I've always been laid back in my potty-training approach :) Worked great with my daughter, not so great with my son! After a few weeks of being laid back about it with Kathryn, she woke up one morning, said she wanted to wear panties to church, so we let her, and she never looked back. No accidents! (We still had her in pull-ups at night for a year or so.)
For Matthew, I had to do all sorts of little tricks, like stickers, m&ms -- and you may recall from my blog that we are STILL working on him not having accidents :)
Good Luck!!
YAY Charlotte! We've actually been having a similar dilemma with Liam - he has told us twice now when he has a stinky diaper. We may soon get out the potty, just to put it out, but no pressure. I don't have a TON of advice for you because our potty training experience with Zachary was sort of done on a timeline (a couple of years ago we were told in December he would be moving to a new class in January, and had to be potty trained in that class...so we were kind of forced into potty training over Christmas break - if you end up on a timeline, I've got plenty of tips & tricks that worked for us!). But I say, if there is no timeline like that, just do what you're doing - put the potty out, and if she wants to go, she can go. If she starts having a lot of dry diapers (meaning, she's going to the potty rather than in her diaper), at that point I'd recommend skipping pull-ups during the day completely. We tried them for a day or 2 with Zachary & he just thought it was a diaper. We had better success just going straight to underwear. He still had accidents, but not as many because he wasn't under the impression he was wearing a diaper. Plus, I bet a girl would be much less likely to want to mess up her pretty princess (or whatever!) panties! :) That's another thing - when you do get to that point, either take her with you to buy undies, or make sure to pick some out with stuff on it that she likes. She may be more likely to want to keep them clean & dry if she is excited about what is on them.
Good luck!!
I will be giving absolutely no advise on potty training. You go, Charlotte.
I can't remember when her birthday is? How old is she now? We did a boot camp method and it worked GREAT for Handley. Basically I committed to being at home for 3-5 days and not going ANYWHERE (not even outside to play because we really needed to be close to the potty)!!! It was a long few days but so totally worth it. The weekend before we started I really talked it up, went on and on about how she was a big girl now, no more diapers, got to wear big-girl panties, use the potty, etc. When she woke up on Monday morning we took her diaper off and never looked back. Said bye-bye to diapers (except for naps and at night). She went bare bottomed for the first day or two (I'd read it was easier for them to feel when they needed to go this way). She had two accidents that morning. She'd start peeing and then run to the potty. After that it clicked, she learned to recognize the urge to go before she went and would run to the potty. We gave an M&M for peeing in the potty and had other bigger rewards for going #2. That week she maybe had 1 accident a day and since then she's been totally potty trained. I was nervous about going out of the house at first so I'd put a pull-up on over her panties if we went to a friends house, to ride in the car to the store, etc. That way she would feel if she was wet, but it would protect the carseat, other's floors, etc. However, she never had an accident outside of the house. Good luck! It's a lot of work for you and you'll feel like you live in the bathroom for a few days, but if she is ready, it's good to take advantage of her interest and jump right in.
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