This is a topic that often raises dread among parents…lol. We all want it done quickly and neatly with as little stress and mess as possible. You always hear the horror stories of kids that are still not potty trained at 4 or 5 years old and you always swear that your kid will never be one of those horror stories J
My first son didn’t show much interest in the potty before he turned 3 but then right after his 3rd birthday it suddenly clicked. We used a sticker chart and some small rewards and it literally only took about a week. It was indeed painless and stress-free. We were so proud of him and obviously thought we knew all we needed to know about potty training…lol.
Then came the time to train my second son! His 3rd birthday rolled around and he didn’t just show any interest, he was completely resistant. We tried the sticker chart – after all it had worked before. Well not this time! We tried small rewards – they didn’t work either. We tried bigger rewards – they worked for about a week and we were back to square one. It didn’t help matters that he was in and out of big boy underwear and pull-ups. We would do the underwear consistently for a while until we all grew tired of wet pants, stains on the carpet and the constant changing of clothes. Then we would give up and go back to pull-ups. In hindsight, this was probably very confusing for my son and sent way too many mixed messages to him. We decided to just back off in case this was all about him keeping control of the situation. We knew that we couldn’t force him to pee in potty until he really wanted to.
When his 4th birthday rolled around I was mortified that I was one of “those” parents whose 4 year old child was not yet potty trained. We decided to try once more and this time we were very consistent with the underwear. We used prizes that he got to pick out and that sat in the bathroom waiting for him. We gave him control over whether he peed in the potty or not. It did finally work and he was pee-trained within about a week. Yeah!
However, now we are working on pooping in the potty. He has done it several times early on (so we know he can) but now he is completely resistant. He still pees just fine and even stays dry all through the night. We have no more pull-ups and will not go back to them no matter what. But I’m sooooo tired of cleaning up after him – I hate poopy underwear J The prize idea no longer seems to hold the same appeal and I’m very against punishing him for pooping in his underwear since I don’t want to cause him to start holding his poop which I know kids do when they’re scared. So we try encouragement and we do require him to help clean up any mess he makes (the whole natural consequence thing). It is just so frustrating to have gotten so far and yet feel like we still haven’t crossed the finish line. Meanwhile, my almost 2 year old little girl is already peeing and pooping in the potty J In the long run, we will persevere because we love our son and we know he can do this!
