(This post is a condensed version of the one I posted at my blog a while back. Sandeepa thought it would be useful here, to benefit other parents in this phase.)
Last year, Operation Potty started with grandeur and flopped miserably. In post-analysis, several reasons were cited for its failure:
- Kodi hadn’t fallen into a peeing/pooping routine - it was still random and unpredictable.
- We always seemed to miss the timing by just a few minutes.
- We might have had some success if we sat with him long enough in the bathroom, but I had no patience for prolonging that bathroom time. After all it was summer, time to be playing outside, not sitting in the toilet all evening.
But though I shelved it for summer, I didn’t really stop trying. Every weekend we were home and whenever we fancied, we’d put him in underwear, but it was really no use. It was the same over and over. Missed timing, accident, cleaning up, frustration. Then my first trimester came and I was too exhausted to even think potty training, so the whole idea was scrapped again. During Christmas break, I revisited the topic one more time, with a lot more determination and resolve. We had to find what we were doing wrong and had to break the endless cycle of missed timing.
So I went with the tried and true method - bribing. If bribes can get you college admissions, surely they can buy you potty training?! We re-explained the whole process to Kodi - of how only babies use diapers and big boys use the toilet. I might have repeated a hundred times about how he should tell me and where he should pee. After revisiting the basics, we introduced the bribe. ‘Kodi, you pee in the toilet and you get 1 Barney sticker, you poop and you get 2. Deal?’ He sounded intrigued. It was the first time he was being rewarded for anything, so more than anything, he was curious about this whole game, I think.
Then it required a lot of discipline from us -
- The first step was to take the diaper off and forget it even existed.
- The second was to leave him free willy. This was not possible - it was winter, so we went with underwear and regular clothes on top.
- The third was to come up with some pattern of timing. I was frequenting the loo so many times a day anyway, so why not time it to my visits! And thats how it started - every time I had to go, I would let him go first. And if he wasn’t successful, we tried again in half hour, if he was, he’d get a huge cheer and a sticker.
- The fourth and most difficult was to brace ourselves for more accidents, and be patient when it happened, instead of giving into frustration and temper. After all, he was not doing it on purpose.
Unlike our previous tries, this method worked like a charm, right from the start!
My theories on why it worked…
- The lure of Barney stickers. We got out a fresh notebook for him, he picked the sticker he wanted, I put a date next to it, and a ‘good job’ with a star, made a huge deal and made him show it off to Bapa and all that. If he told us before he had to go, we doubled his bribe amount. Often during the day, I’d show him the notebook and marvel at how many he’d got already. That appealed to his vanity. The bribes made him feel it was worth his time to cooperate with us and try.
- His body was more regulated now, he was somewhat predictable.
- It was a case of I want to be a big boy
- Two and half seems to be some magic number around which a lot of toilet training comes automatically. So in the end, Barney might have helped only with motivation, the rest might have been his own readiness.
I told his school that he seemed to be doing well and they gave it a try too. First couple of days, they kept his diaper on, and took him to the restroom every few hours. That worked, so they switched straight to underwear and we skipped the whole training pants phase! They used a diaper for his naps the first few days, but that turned out to be unnecessary, so now he is diaper free at naps as well. We use a cloth diaper for nights.
A couple of weeks of diligent work both at school and at home, and he was able to tell us before he had to go. For now, he can be considered potty trained. There are still occassional accidents though -
- When he is thick in the middle of playing and waits too long. This happens more often in school than at home.
- Even when he is not playing, he still won't tell his teachers before he has to go, they look for signs of him squirming and fidgeting, and end up taking him. Any suggestions from other parents on how to overcome this phase?
Hope this helps others who are in a similar boat. I recently read another mom's approach to the problem - check out Noon's potty training tips.
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Some very useful suggestions that came out of the comments section:
Poppins suggests training underwear for kids who have just started, but aren't ready for long outings. "They are washable, reusable cloth underwear with absorbable material inside. It doesn’t fully absorb but absorbs enough to prevent an embarrassing dripping accident. No point in making me feel ashamed at school. You get them at Mothercare. "
2B's Mommy shares her experience "if you train intensively over 2-3 days, then that’s all it takes for the toddlers to get nappy-free. That’s how it happened with both of my kids, I just picked a weekend when I had not planned anything else and they were almost trained by Monday. But I did inform at their daycare a week before, so that they could put them on the toilet seat every hour to get the child used to the toilet seat and they had already had some success before the weekend. I think the kids learn when they watch the other kids using the toilet at the daycare."
Sandeepa's tips for traveling "..while travelling, don’t worry, you/the hybby can hold him to do his job. Till last year anyway I was not comfy with S going to public toilets in rest areas and so held her, which was uncomfortable but..sighh. For the hotels etc. you can carry the toilet seat."
CA recycled stickers at home "..I just used the address stickers sent from various organisations that were just piled in the house for potty training rewards."
Lavanya shares her experience "...i guess when children near their 3rd year, they r able to say before they pee, give or take a few months. and i would like to add that using diapers only when going out will not harm the training, becoz again, u can keep telling them that diapers r only for outings. my daughter was in this diaper-for-outingonly stage till she was three and when she started going to KG1(2 months after she turned 3) she was out of the diapers once for all."
Kiran's words sum up the trick to the whole deal .."What worked, I am told, was peer pressure. The other kids go to pee and tell the teacher when they need to poop. And he learnt. When the body is ready, the child will learn."
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