The Potty Training Diaries

It's been about a week and a half since the big potty training "boot camp" weekend that went down at our house. The girls' mothers morning out program was closed for the holidays and I took a few additonal days off work so we could stay home all day and work on this whole potty business. It was exhausting. And messy. And frustrating. Yet successful...for 1 out of 2. Seriously, we have been discussing whether we will try for more children and although I'm the one who thinks I could possibly go for one more, I was certainly swayed by Travis's question to me the other day: "Do you REALLY want to have to potty train any more children??". Hmmm...score 1 for hubby.

Anyway, it really wasn't as terrible once I figured out what was working, and what was not working. At first I had them in panties...special panties with princesses and Hello Kitty and Dora and basically whatever they picked out at the store. We talked these panties up BIG time! Totally worked for Camille. She wanted the "fancy" underwear and she wanted to keep them dry! She did not want to pee on Cinderella, heaven forbid! Charlotte sometimes wanted the panties, but then I figured out she liked running around in nothing at all! So I let her.

It only took once or twice of peeing all over the place for them to get the hang of running to the potty. I had a candy jar in the bathroom and they got candy for a successful trip. We also had a sticker chart. This started out exciting but faded fast...and they preferred the stickers on their hands and not the chart. Both girls were actually using the potty and I found that the strongest motivator for my two was the goody bag. My goody bag was stocked with about 10 toys, just small little plastic toys mainly, mostly of the Sesame Street variety (with a few princesses and one small Strawberry shortcake thrown in for good measure). I let them take a peak inside the goody bag and I believe that is pretty much all it took. For one big day we went through that goody bag like nobody's business. I had grand ideas of doing so many stickers on the chart added up to a goody bag prize, but they really weren't connecting the two. I realized I needed that reward to happen immediately after the event. So we just burned through the bag in like a day and a half, but by then they had caught on and didn't need the "goody bag" motivation anymore. Now just being able to flush is enough reward in and of itself!

Charlotte actually had the first successful goody bag event take place and chose Big Bird. Camille retrieved Bert at one point and ran to the potty a few hours later screaming "Ernie! Ernie in goody bag!" Yep, she went in the potty and rescued Ernie from the goody bag. Bribery plus the princess panties totally worked for Camille, and since then she's been doing really well. It took her a few extra days to figure out how to do #2 in the potty, but she's pretty much got that down now too. She is dry after most naps (although I use the term "nap" loosely as my children are apparently on a 6 month or longer boycott of them so no actual sleeping usually occurs), and she's dry most mornings as well. She will now tell me when she needs to go, and she's going to school in panties as well.

Then there is Charlotte. Sigh. I really don't know where I went wrong here! She's showing all the same signs and is ready, but somewhere along the way she decided that this whole potty training thing just wasn't as great as it was cracked up to be, and she decided it was for the birds. She just stopped going in the potty by the end of day 2. Haven't had her go in it since (although she did go at school twice). I've got her in pullups now and did my best salesman pitch for using the potty, but no dice. What's so funny is that she loves to watch Camille go, she says "yay Camille" and cheers her on and even talks about how Camille goes potty. She's just totally not interested in doing so herself! We borrowed an Elmo goes Potty video and we are going to give that a try, as she does love Elmo. I realize too that a lot of it is my fault. The girls have learned the meaning of "too" and so now everything is "I want a cracker, please" followed shortly by "I want one too!". So, Camille gets her candy for going potty and Charlotte is right there with her little hands held out saying "I want some candy too!". I have told her and told her that you only get candy for going in the potty, but she persists. And yes, I give her the candy. I just can't deny her! So I know I'm not teaching her she actually needs to use the potty to get the reward. If anyone has any other ideas, I'm all ears. I'm hoping that if I give her some time, she'll just up and do it one day (hopefully soon!). If anyone trained their kids over a longer time period using the pullups, I'd love to hear how you did it. The problem I'm having is that Charlotte doesn't mind at all going in the pullups, so she must not be uncomfortable in them, and thus has no motivation to use the potty.

Here's my favorite picture from the boot camp weekend! (and yes, those are adult incontinence pads that I have on the couch...they saved many a couch cushion and were my mom's brilliant idea!)



So I guess the moral of the story is that potty training really depends on the kid!! And I can't believe I have a big girl in panties now!! Where has the time gone?