And Baby Makes Four

(Big sigh of relief.) I can now safely and confidently say that Benjamin is potty trained! Our long, frustrating road with this process began two years ago (see my initial, overly positive post here), when we bought a tiny Baby Bjorn training potty after then 15 month old Benjamin expressed some interest in using the potty. That was a very short phase, and after that we didn’t try again until he was over two years old.

Just as we started to make some progress, Peter was born, and the upheaval of life as he knew it made Benjamin lose interest yet again (plus we didn’t have the time and energy to devote to the process…) We kept making excuses about being too busy, and kept postponing the “all in” mentality that is necessary to make potty training work, and so for months we gave a half-hearted effort that really wasn’t going anywhere. (We switched completely to pull-ups during the fall, but he still treated them like diapers.) We tried the reward system, giving him a few M&Ms any time he went on the potty, and we even bought him a toy guitar the first time he pooped on the potty, but these rewards didn’t make any long term difference.

Suddenly, Benjamin was a three year old still wearing pull-ups, who could easily pee pee on the potty, but usually chose to go in his pull-up. Meanwhile, he was still scared of pooping on the potty, and so he would go hide in a corner to go. For awhile we tried to “catch” him in the act and transfer him to the potty, but we decided that was unnecessarily cruel. Instead, we persistently talked positively about the idea of using the potty, figuring that one day he would decide on his own that he’d like to try it.

That day came when we were staying at Mama C and Grandad’s house in Ruston. Mama C decided that we should leave his pull-up off for awhile, because we knew he needed to go. We handed over control to him, telling him that when he was ready he could sit on the potty and go. And that’s what he did a few minutes later! It took a couple more weeks of encouragement and praise, but I am thrilled to report that he hasn’t pooped in his pull-up in over three weeks now!

Once we had cleared that major hurdle, all that was left was for Benjamin to learn to always go pee pee on the potty, and to keep his underwear dry. So, we took the leap and put him in underwear! At first, we would only put it on him for short amounts of time, and only when we were at home. And the first few days, he was having accidents within 30 minutes to an hour of putting it on. I decided to persevere, and deal with cleaning up some messes on the floor. I knew he understood, and I knew he had the ability, and so one morning last week I sat down and told him that he was going to wear his underwear all day, and that he was going to keep it dry. And just to give him some extra motivation, I promised a reward if he succeeded:

• Day One: ice cream from Coldstone Creamery. I forced him to use the bathroom about once an hour, and so at the end of the day he got his ice cream.
• Day Two: a ride on the mall carousel. Again, I made sure he went to the bathroom frequently, even though that often meant carrying him to the bathroom and making him stand there and go. But the end of the day came and he was dry, so he had a fun, wonder-filled carousel ride.
• Day Three: a swim in the apartment complex pool. On this day I backed off a little and let him dictate when he went, to a certain extent. A couple of times when I encouraged him to go, he said, “Mommy, I’ll tell you when I need to go, I promise.” That night, we went swimming at the pool.
• That was Friday, and now it’s Monday. For the past three days I haven’t offered any rewards. We just put his underwear on when he wakes up in the morning, and he goes to the bathroom about every three hours (I’m amazed he can hold it that long!), or any time we are leaving home. He even wears underwear during his nap, but we are still putting him in a pull-up at night. Perhaps we will be finished with that soon, though, because this morning he woke up totally dry.

So here we are. Benjamin is finally potty trained at the late age of three years, three and a half months. It’s been nice to not have two diapers to change every time we leave the house. It will be nice to not shell out money for pull-ups every month. But most of all, I am thrilled that I no longer have to change those stinky, adult sized poops!

I am one of the last people who should give out advice on how to potty train, since it took me two years to get it right with Benjamin. Instead of giving some step by step list that guarantees success (I don’t think such a thing exists), I’ll just share what I’ve learned through this process:

• You can’t force it to happen.
• It requires great patience.
• You can watch for the signs that your child is ready, but even if they are physically ready, it won’t happen until they are mentally ready to handle it.
• In Benjamin’s case, he didn’t see pull-ups as training pants – he saw them as another form of diapers, the only difference being that he could put them on himself. So for us, the months and months we spent putting him in pull-ups were mostly a waste of time and money.
• What really worked for us was putting him in underwear (this wouldn’t have worked if he wasn’t ready). Once he felt how comfortable it was to stay dry and not wear a bulky diaper or pull-up, he wanted to do what was necessary to stay that way. The first few days he tested us by peeing in his underwear, but at least he usually went to a tile floor instead of going on the carpet. Once he saw that we weren’t giving up and putting him back in pull-ups, he changed his tune and stopped having “accidents.”
• Positive reinforcement is important – When Benjamin started pooping on the potty, and when he kept his underwear dry, we were quick to praise him, and did so often. On the other hand, we tried not to complain or criticize him when he had accidents. These positive words gave him some extra confidence to become fully potty trained.

Maybe if the stuff of life hadn’t come along when it did (Peter’s birth, selling the house, moving, etc.), Benjamin would have been potty trained a year ago, but then again, maybe not. If it really is more about him being ready, rather than about what we do to make it happen, then maybe it doesn’t really matter what techniques we use. In the end, it was as if someone flipped a switch in Benjamin’s mind from “totally resistant” to “totally ready.” Basically overnight, he developed the ability to stay dry, hold it in, and go when it was time. So maybe the best advice is to wing it, be encouraging, and wait for the right moment to jump all in!