I'm sure everyone has been waiting for an update about Mason's potty training. Although, now I hear the proper term is supposed to be "potty learning". That's just dumb. It's training, folks. Very similar to house-breaking a puppy. Show them where to pee. Avoid having them pee elsewhere.
Anyway, Mason has been making great strides in the #1 category. He hasn't had a pee accident in several days, which has definitely taken the edge off my laundry duty. He tells me when he has to go; "Mommy! I gotta go pee!!!" with his impish little smile. So cute. I'm still too paranoid to risk leaving a pee trail at Target, so I put him in pull-ups when I'm dumb or desperate enough to leave the relative safety of my home. However, on our recent errand day, he did keep the pull-ups dry the whole time. Lightning McQueen icons on the front remained intact.
We only have to make it over the #2 hump, and then we'll have heaven in our hat. I think he recognizes when a poop is imminent, he just doesn't have to patience to sit there that whole long time. (Not patient? Where would he get that?) My MIL handed me a newspaper article written by that bonehead prat whose name escapes me right now, although I think it's Jewish. He's an older fellow, who always seems to think that no children raised in the "good ole' days" had any issues because their old-fashioned parents just made it happen and didn't coddle them. Which begs the question, "Why do psychotherapists make money, then?" In his infinite wisdom, he first of all can't understand why parents no longer train all children to use the potty long by age two. See, I'm eternally grateful that most people no longer use this standard. I think the younger the child, the more probable that it will take a long time and a lot of frustration. Anyway, having a toddler in underwear is no picnic. Diapers are way easier. Why rush it?
So, the old fart says it's easy to train children to poop on the potty. Just strip them off after breakfast, tell them the doctor says they have to poop on the potty and then leave them there until it happens. He seems to think this works perfectly for all children. Just. Like. That.
I admit I tried a variation on this theme. It worked not at all. Mason cannot bear for me to leave him alone like that! I think he was abandoned in a past life! Clearly, it wasn't the path to poop success for us.
My SIL tried it, too. Her son didn't freak out about being left alone, but he didn't quite produce the desired outcome, either. Apparently, he didn't want to let his precious bundle fall down into that potty unnoticed, so he brought it in his hand to his mother. :) Funny the old fart never mentioned that possibility.
See, that's the thing. Kids will throw ya. The infinite possibilities available to the human mind are not wasted, even on the young. If you think you've devised a fail-safe method to get them to do anything, think again. The best you can do is try and get them to want the same things you want. Then again, that generally works better in all human relationships.
Maybe it really is potty learning after all.
Showing posts with label Potty Training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Potty Training. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Potty Mouth
Could there possibly be a task of motherhood that I despise more than potty training? I think not. I have heard claims of 2-year-olds happily abandoning their diapering days virtually the instant they are tempted with the promise of a fine-looking pair of Big Boy Undies; however, I have not witnessed it first-hand. About the only thing going for me at this point is that I gratefully live in an era that has become less obsessed about how old a child is when they reach this milestone. Now, it's generally only people born before 1960 that might raise an eyebrow at 3-year-olds in diapers. (Or Pull-Ups, better known as overpriced diapers you can change standing up.)
Though I have taught two kids how to read, add, multiply, spell, write and recognize a liberal, I still consider myself a colossal failure at communicating the lesson of basic sanitation. With my first child, I didn't really try at all until she was nearly 3. She learned "number one" almost immediately, but chronic constipation made "number two" a lesson that lagged for ages. On my incompetent pediatrician's advice, I constantly gave her prune juice, which never helped at all. I switched to a wonderful, earth-mother-crunchy pediatrician (whom I had to leave eventually because she dropped my insurance). She recommended increasing magnesium intake naturally, for which nuts are apparently optimal. One Planter's Cashew jar later, my daughter became regular and never had another day of constipation. So, she became potty-trained when she was 3 1/2.
I thought I had it in the bag with my second child. I tried the old lady method of putting them on the potty when they were little infants, so they would get used to it. That aspect worked out great. He was not afraid of the potty, nor rebellious about sitting on it. Before he was two years old, I could take him to the potty any time and he would non-challantly sit there until he peed. However, he didn't personally care about going to the potty. He saw no particular benefit in being dry, so if I wasn't on the ball, he would be wet (or messy) and happy as a clam. If I had really wanted to, I could have put him in underwear, taken him potty every hour or so, washed two or three pairs of accident pants a day and called him potty trained. Then I could be one of those moms who walked around saying he was potty trained before he was two. But this prospect did not appeal to me. "Potty-trained" to me means they know and care where they're supposed to do their business. They make an effort to go potty themselves or enlist help when the need arises, at least 80% of the time. If they would sit happily in a filthy puddle should you not take them potty in a timely fashion, they are not potty trained, IMHO.
Anyway, I put him back-and-forth in underwear, in pull-ups, underwear, pull-ups over the next two years, waiting for him to reach a point where he would care. He's such an easy-going chap, bless his heart. He never did care until I upped the ante shortly after he turned four. Since he was wild about Burger King at the time, a place you can hardly pay me to go, I let him know there was a flame-broiled patty of mashed-down kangaroo meat in it for him if he could go a week with only smiley faces on his potty chart. Thank God for fast-food bribery. It worked like a charm.
Now I'm facing this monster task of motherhood for the third time. This is my second attempt at it, after a false start in August. At that time, Mason was just shy of three and showed all the "signs" (whatever the heck that's supposed to help) of being able to use the potty. At first, we were wildly successful. He peed in the potty 97 times before lunch. He was "telling me" - i.e., he cared, which is the acid test for me. Then, he took a nap. Someone secretly switched him while he napped. He woke up thinking the potty was the Tool of the Devil. He wouldn't sit on that thing, even if there was a cheeseburger in it for him. If I "gently insisted", it was like trying to sit him on a hedgehog. So I did what any weak-willed mother does. I gave up.
The weird thing was, he did like to go potty in potties away from home. Kind of the reverse of most kids. We would be in church and he would squeal in a weird falsetto, "I got to PEEEEEEEEEE! I got to PEEEEEEEEE!" right in front of Sister Callahanto. So, I knew he was capable of all elements of pottying. He just wasn't going to do it on my say-so.
Now that we're in the dead of winter and our activities are at a minimum, I thought I would revisit the potty concept. I was planning to take a week in February for an intensive, week-long potty workshop. Since I've discovered kitchen timers help my transition-phobic child go along with the program, I was planning to use timers to help the process along. Then, Friday night, for reasons I can't explain, I impulsively decided to resume potty training that instant. I decided I would muscle through the inevitable crying. Of course, Friday night was a terrible night to start, for the very reason that interruptions would be constant all weekend - wrestling matches, errands, sleepovers, church. However, I went along with my ill-conceived plan.
Not surprisingly, he did cry on every trip to the potty, but he mostly sat and then would be happy over his success. The timer did help, but over the weekend it was too inconsistent to be very effective. Today, the timer is helping much more, since we've been home all day. We even got to a few instances of him telling me - again, my acid test of potty training.
I know there are some who would say that you shouldn't be training a child who cries. (A younger version of me would say that.) But for Mason, crying is part of the recipe. For him, mild tears are his usual state and only if he's going ballistic do tears concern me. Thankfully, ballistic hasn't happened this potty-training round. Perhaps cute Thomas the Train underwear are not far off in his future. We'll see.
Though I have taught two kids how to read, add, multiply, spell, write and recognize a liberal, I still consider myself a colossal failure at communicating the lesson of basic sanitation. With my first child, I didn't really try at all until she was nearly 3. She learned "number one" almost immediately, but chronic constipation made "number two" a lesson that lagged for ages. On my incompetent pediatrician's advice, I constantly gave her prune juice, which never helped at all. I switched to a wonderful, earth-mother-crunchy pediatrician (whom I had to leave eventually because she dropped my insurance). She recommended increasing magnesium intake naturally, for which nuts are apparently optimal. One Planter's Cashew jar later, my daughter became regular and never had another day of constipation. So, she became potty-trained when she was 3 1/2.
I thought I had it in the bag with my second child. I tried the old lady method of putting them on the potty when they were little infants, so they would get used to it. That aspect worked out great. He was not afraid of the potty, nor rebellious about sitting on it. Before he was two years old, I could take him to the potty any time and he would non-challantly sit there until he peed. However, he didn't personally care about going to the potty. He saw no particular benefit in being dry, so if I wasn't on the ball, he would be wet (or messy) and happy as a clam. If I had really wanted to, I could have put him in underwear, taken him potty every hour or so, washed two or three pairs of accident pants a day and called him potty trained. Then I could be one of those moms who walked around saying he was potty trained before he was two. But this prospect did not appeal to me. "Potty-trained" to me means they know and care where they're supposed to do their business. They make an effort to go potty themselves or enlist help when the need arises, at least 80% of the time. If they would sit happily in a filthy puddle should you not take them potty in a timely fashion, they are not potty trained, IMHO.
Anyway, I put him back-and-forth in underwear, in pull-ups, underwear, pull-ups over the next two years, waiting for him to reach a point where he would care. He's such an easy-going chap, bless his heart. He never did care until I upped the ante shortly after he turned four. Since he was wild about Burger King at the time, a place you can hardly pay me to go, I let him know there was a flame-broiled patty of mashed-down kangaroo meat in it for him if he could go a week with only smiley faces on his potty chart. Thank God for fast-food bribery. It worked like a charm.
Now I'm facing this monster task of motherhood for the third time. This is my second attempt at it, after a false start in August. At that time, Mason was just shy of three and showed all the "signs" (whatever the heck that's supposed to help) of being able to use the potty. At first, we were wildly successful. He peed in the potty 97 times before lunch. He was "telling me" - i.e., he cared, which is the acid test for me. Then, he took a nap. Someone secretly switched him while he napped. He woke up thinking the potty was the Tool of the Devil. He wouldn't sit on that thing, even if there was a cheeseburger in it for him. If I "gently insisted", it was like trying to sit him on a hedgehog. So I did what any weak-willed mother does. I gave up.
The weird thing was, he did like to go potty in potties away from home. Kind of the reverse of most kids. We would be in church and he would squeal in a weird falsetto, "I got to PEEEEEEEEEE! I got to PEEEEEEEEE!" right in front of Sister Callahanto. So, I knew he was capable of all elements of pottying. He just wasn't going to do it on my say-so.
Now that we're in the dead of winter and our activities are at a minimum, I thought I would revisit the potty concept. I was planning to take a week in February for an intensive, week-long potty workshop. Since I've discovered kitchen timers help my transition-phobic child go along with the program, I was planning to use timers to help the process along. Then, Friday night, for reasons I can't explain, I impulsively decided to resume potty training that instant. I decided I would muscle through the inevitable crying. Of course, Friday night was a terrible night to start, for the very reason that interruptions would be constant all weekend - wrestling matches, errands, sleepovers, church. However, I went along with my ill-conceived plan.
Not surprisingly, he did cry on every trip to the potty, but he mostly sat and then would be happy over his success. The timer did help, but over the weekend it was too inconsistent to be very effective. Today, the timer is helping much more, since we've been home all day. We even got to a few instances of him telling me - again, my acid test of potty training.
I know there are some who would say that you shouldn't be training a child who cries. (A younger version of me would say that.) But for Mason, crying is part of the recipe. For him, mild tears are his usual state and only if he's going ballistic do tears concern me. Thankfully, ballistic hasn't happened this potty-training round. Perhaps cute Thomas the Train underwear are not far off in his future. We'll see.
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