On life in the Bathroom...

Several people have asked me to share our method of potty training, so here we go. I wanted to wait a bit before posting this, because I wanted to make sure it "stuck". W had one day of regression (but seeing as I was laid up with a back injury, I can hardly blame the child)and she got right back on track the next day. But before I go into the details of What we did, I first want to give the Why's.

We started potty training based on the signs that she was giving us. She was ready, she just didn't know she was ready! We'd been taking baby steps towards it for months. First teaching her how to pull down her own pants, then her pull ups. Teaching her to throw away her pull up and put a new one on. After a while she started to do that herself, without us needing to tell her every time. We decided to definitely potty train when she started to try to take offer own (mushy) poopy diapers. There was an incident with poop on my couch and trailing on the floor. Nuff said. So we knew that even though she didn't seem to understand the words and concepts of pee and poop, she could recognize when she did those things and she finally had gotten to the point that sitting in her own waste was no longer entirely comfortable.

So potty training was scheduled for my Spring Break from my classes, so I could devote my life to it. On the Sunday night before she went to bed, we put her in her last diaper ever. When she woke up on Monday, we sat her on the potty for about 10 minutes. Then we put her in unrwear and drove her over to BCA. See, this is the nice part....I had a few hours every day to spend with my son before entering the world of the toilet. But at 11:30 her shift at BCA was over and I joined her in the bathroom. That first day she spent from morning till night in the bathroom. Ten minutes on the potty, five minutes off. Her five minutes off the potty were still spent in the bathroom, she just played with some toys that we had set up in there. We fed her salty snacks and juice all day so she kept having to pee. The more she peed, the more likely she was to pee in the potty, consisting the amount of time she aaas on it. And when she peed in the potty, OH the big fuss we made! The clapping and cheering and prizes! She caught on pretty quickly- peeing in that porcelain thing is good, it's what makes everyone very excited! Sure there were times she peed on the floor, but we didn't make a big deal over it. Just had her help us clean it up and simply told her that we pee in the potty. We called it quits when she started falling asleep on the toilet.

Day 2 was much of the same. Day 3 was where it got exciting. By this point, you are fairly sick of the bathroom and think that your child is going to never figure this out. I know, you're thinking "oh, that's only a couple of days, what is she talking about?" Spend hours and hours with a kid in a small windowless room and tell me that you don't feel a distorted sense of time. So by this point I'm developing a twitch, but something amazing happens. Diva Girl hits her stride. In the course of the day she pees 8 times....and all of it goes in the toilet. Angels sang! After 6 in a row, she moves to 5 minutes on the toilet, 10 minutes off. Day 4 is successful as well, so we move to the next phase. Leaving the bathroom.

Friday, we allow her to go into the room next to the bathroom. By that point, Diva Girl is so used to her strange new life she seemed almost resistant to leaving the bathroom. But after a while she gets very excited about it. And then she had a bunch of accidents. But fear not! Some of them she had while running towards the bathroom. And sometimes she actually initiated the bathroom trips. Once she was successful 6 more times, we started to let her further from the bathroom and time the potty trips out more. At this point we still initiate 75% of trips to the bathroom, but she is starting to get better about that.

This worked for us. I imagine that it would work for a lot of kids. But I know that no one way of potty training is perfect for every kid out there, so if you don't think it's for you I certainly won't be offended. The main things with this method are that there is no turning back...once you take the diapers away, do not give them back. Because, believe me, you will want to give up at some point. But I know for my kid, if we'd given her her diapers back (and trust me, she wanted them...for days we knew when she was about to pee because she would yell "diaper!! Diaper change!!") she would have thought that if she peed on the floor we'd give her the comfort of her familiar diapers back. Another thing with this method is finding the right motivator and praising like crazy. At first we used all kinds of things, but we actually discovered that praising her while she went and giving her a sticker was the best way to encourage her. No shaming or attention for "misses". And you have to go into it willing to put in the time. We did Nothing but potty train for a week. And I mean NOTHING. I sat with her, in that bathroom, or the adjacent room, the whole time. Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention earlier...when she was off of the potty, we had her check and see if she was still dry. We'd ask "Diva Girl are you still dry?", then have her pat herself to check, then tell her "you are dry, you are doing such a good job!"

Ok, I'm not sure if I've left anything out or not, I'm a bit sleep deprived. But if you have any questions about what we did, just ask! I'm happy to share. Diva Girl is doing great, and even uses public restrooms just fine when we are out. It's been two and a half weeks since we started all this, and she has been considered "potty trained" since day 6!