Potty training

Potty training a bashful, strong-willed child has taken over my life, but we are somehow having fun.

Every day so far of potty training, I've thought, "I should probably write down what times she's gone potty so that I can plan better tomorrow." But for the first week, I didn't have any strategies or plans. I didn't even read about potty training. How hard can it really be? Both my sister and an acquaintance-mom have told me that when they switched their kids to panties, they were potty trained in 2-weeks. That was the idea with Madison, but it's not looking likely here at the one-week marker. For the first few days, I just kept doing the same thing over and over again and getting frustrated. What I know about child development is limited to what they teach high school teachers in teacher prep programs. It's good, but not comprehensive. I didn't learn a whole lot about pre-school children, BUT people were successfully potty-training their children before child psychology books were a thing.

My unprofessional advice: don't buy a bunch of how-to books and wait until your child is 3 just because you think it'll be easier. Experiment with routines and strategies and games during the daytime and keep the pressure OFF.

Hanging out in undies

Original post:

My approach so far has been to leave Maddie in underwear all day except for naps (no pressure at nap time or bedtime). When she starts to point down there, or when she springs a leak, I rush her to the potty.

It has only worked a couple of times. Literally the very first time I took her diaper off and let her sit on the potty, she peed in it. It was awesome! I cheered with my hands above my head, and scared her so badly that she thought she did something wrong. Oops. The next night, she panicked on the potty and peed as she ran away. A good friend told me that Maddie probably has stage fright. Makes sense...

According to Google, my kid is too young. While she can hold it for hours and can tell me when she's about to go, she can't get her panties off all the way without help. But... she isn't punished for accidents, and she really does love getting to pick out pitty pannies (pretty panties) several times a day. I've known for several years now that my mom started potty training all of us at 18 months, but I didn't understand how significant that was until now. When I asked her to elaborate the other day, she said she let us sleep in diapers until we were like 3, but she started putting us in underwear during the day pretty early just to "get the hang of it". None of us had accidents past 3, so I think I'm going to stick with the same approach and see if I get the same results

I went to Walmart and got two 10-packs of panties over the weekend and stuck her in em starting as soon as she woke up. About halfway through the first full day in panties, she did what looked like a poop squat, so I rushed her to the potty and she did her dirty biz with no signs of fear or frustration or anxiety. It was a great sign. Didn't happen again for almost another week though.

For the first several days, she would freeze up once we got to the potty. It was so confusing because she was either doing the potty dance or starting to tinkle on herself! We'd sit on or around the potty for 10, 20, 30 minutes just reading books over and over again, but I'd get beyond bored and would call it off. Then, within just 2 or 3 minutes of leaving the bathroom, she'd pee on the floor. Consistently.

Edit:

Looking back, that was probably just a bad approach. If I was bored in there, then she was probably bored too!

After 4-5 days, I decided to stop putting so much pressure on her. I'm not ignoring her, but I'm also not watching her like a hawk, waiting for her to have an accident so that I can rush her to the potty when it's too late.

My new approach is to let her decide if she wants to run to the potty or not. I bring it to whichever room we're in and show her where it is. After that, I just let her play her heart out. Sometimes when she starts to tinkle, she'll go right in front of the potty. Sure, I want to take control and stick her on the potty, but that's way too much pressure for the both of us.

Once I let go a little and just started bringing the potty to wherever we were playing, she started pottying in it way more often, 1-2 times a day on average.

I could devote an entire blog series to what it's like to raise a strong-willed girl who is easily embarrassed, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. I do what feels right: I have to raise her right, but I can't put out her fire. Whatever I do, I always try to remember that forcing someone doesn't teach them anything (other than how to sneak around better). I just give her boundaries (Yes, we're doing panties during the day time now, honey) and I let her do what she finds comfortable inside of those confines (Looks like you went pee-pee there on the floor. That's okay. Come here. Let's pick out a new pair of pretty panties.)

I do continue to sit on the big potty and invite her to sit on hers. We keep books in the bathroom for exactly that purpose. She loves to have reading parties in the bathroom, but my original vision of her peeing while we read just has not become reality. It probably won't. I could picture it so clearly though! She seems to be the type of personality that doesn't like to make a big deal of stuff like this ... she already acts embarrassed in certain situations even though her older cousins don't. I'm thinking that with her personality, she'll only pee in the potty if no one is looking.

--

I went back and added the edits to this post once I'd been potty training for about 10 days. Leaving the potty chair with books in the bathroom did NOT work.

Moving the potty to whatever room we're playing in does work though, especially if there are toys right in front of it. So far, she has been most successful when the potty chair is in the kitchen in front of her toy kitchen. With the layout of our home, the kitchen is the central part of the house, so she is never more than a room away from her potty no matter where we are. Also, she does better when she's not wearing panties, but I'm just not very comfortable with a naked baby girl running around because we keep our windows wide open.

So, that's that. My take away is that it's best to just try different routines and locations until something clicks for your child. I hope this helps someone who, like me, is not patient enough to read books and blogs about child psychology and wants to experiment with potty training around 18 months!