River has recently decided to take his diaper off during naps and bedtime. We'd go in to check on him before we went to bed and his diaper would be sitting on the bed next to his little bare bum (he also takes off his pajamas). He greeted me at the door after one of his naps with his diaper on his head (ew!). All this wasn't too bad, until he peed on the rug next to his bed since he didn't have a diaper on to catch the pee. This spurred an attempt at potty training.
We've had little Baby Bjorn potties in the bathrooms for months now and encourage him to sit on them whenever we are in the bathroom. He would sit on them, for all of 5 seconds, and only if his pants were up. Bare skin on the cold plastic of the potty chair did not work for him. I've never had success with him doing anything on the potty or the toilet, but Mr M has gotten him to sit still on the toilet long enough to pee a couple times. Mr M has him sit backwards, facing the tank, which seems to work if Mr M is helping him, but not if I am.
The day of the peeing-next-to-the-bed incident prompted me to pull out the underpants and give full-on potty training a go. We were't going anywhere, so once I finished my time on the treadmill I could focus on plying River with liquids and encouraging him to sit on the potty.
We had mixed success: he had a couple accidents in his underpants before lunch but I put him down for his nap in underpants anyway. I'd already washed one load of bedding that morning so I figured another load wouldn't be a big issue. The only problem was that he didn't pee in his bed, he peed on the rug again. In the afternoon, he stayed dry, but he never did pee on the potty. When Mr M put him on the toilet he didn't do anything until he stood up- then he peed on the bathroom floor.
That was last Friday.
Since then we've been busy and didn't have time for more, so River's been back in diapers. We didn't want to push it since everyone says you can't force the issue (and we definitely saw that with Sunshine), and since he hadn't peed in the potty we figured he wasn't ready. But then on Tuesday River had a traumatic poop-on-the-sheets-after-he-pulled-his-diaper-off experience at nap time, so I decided it was time to really get serious. If River wouldn't keep a diaper on, then he was going to start using the potty and wearing underpants.
Wednesday after speech therapy I gated off the kitchen (the easiest room to clean since it has linoleum) and let River run around pants-less while guzzling gatorade (the only "juice" we had on hand). He insisted on wearing underpants at first, but after peeing in them twice and being slowed down by them he didn't insist on putting them back on, which made running to the potty a lot easier. Overall the experience was a success. He peed on the floor on several occasions, but he was able to finish on the potty, so it wasn't a complete loss. And there were more occasions where he peed in the potty without first starting on the floor. I had hoped he would poop in the potty, but no luck. He usually poops once a day, but he didn't poop at all that day. My hope was that he wasn't holding it in on purpose- we don't need a constipated kiddo.
Thursday we had to take the car in for an oil change in the morning so I'd planned on him running around pants-less again when we got home. However, he fell asleep on the way home and stayed asleep when I took him up to his bed. When he woke up, I sat him on the potty again. He sat for a bit then wanted to get off and wear his underpants. He's getting better at pulling them up and down, so I didn't insist that he leave them off. A little later I was upstairs changing Ocean's diaper when I heard River start fussing. I came down and he was standing next to his potty, which had poop in it, and he was crying. I'm not sure if he was upset because of a flashback to the poop-on-the-sheets incident or what, but once I started lavishly praising him for pooping in the potty he calmed down. He didn't seem completely convinced that it was ok. But he pooped in the potty, which is still a huge win.
Today we'll be home all day so once I'm done with the treadmill we'll have another pants-less day. One thing we've realized we need to work on is getting him to tell us he needs to go when we're out and about. Last night Mr M took the kiddos with him to the grocery store while I was at a Scout meeting. We weren't ready to trust River to wear underpants outside the house, so we put a diaper on him. He never told Mr M he needed to pee and he came home with a wet diaper. Perhaps this is because he recognized that it was a diaper, not underpants, but we still need to work on him telling us he needs to pee.
Everyone says potty training boys is different than potty training girls. We did early potty training with Sunshine, so we're guaranteed to have a different experience. It'll be interesting to see how it goes this time around.
No comments:
Post a Comment