My son Christopher is learning the joys of potty training, and I have to say, so far this round is going much better. This is our fourth excursion, apparently because no one else wanted to make the effort. We originally got him a foam seat to place directly on the toilet. That was my desperate attempt at skipping the mess of a potty chair. No go. He would refuse to get on it, and I even stooped to begging, pleading, and bribing with M&Ms and Dum-Dum suckers, only to find out both Grandpas and Grandmas wouldn't make him get on the potty. The pee wasn't flowing, but the M&Ms and Dum-Dums were. Then he completely disengaged from the potty. I don't blame him; why get on the potty when I'm already getting the candy?
This time we got him a froggy potty chair, and got him big boy underwear with his option of Cars, Diego, and Thomas the Train Engine. We decided on the sticker rewards. When he finished filling up his sticker chart, he would get a toy from the store. Within a week, the sticker chart was filled, and he only had six accidents, most of them being in his Cars underwear because, in my son's words, "Daddy said it was normal for cars to leave skid marks". Since his favorite show at the moment is Super Why, he decided to get magnetic letters for the fridge to play with when I was cooking dinner, and called them his "super letters". I'm waiting for the novelty to end in about a week, when his second chart is filled up.
I prepared this time, getting potty training hints and tips from magazines, books, family, friends...I even was willing to take advice from complete strangers; they were moms like me and I viewed them as comrades in the war on poop. We decided first on letting him put a sticker on his foam seat every time he peed; if he pooped he got two. We got the idea from a parenting book, but it didn't mention how to talk down a toddler after he saw you peeling Bob the Builder off because he got pooped on and just couldn't be saved. Whether he was traumatized or not, he refused to get back on the foam seat and we had to get the frog.
Now my biggest fight is not with a strong willed toddler, but rather with my husband Ben, who is a farmhand and a farmer. He's shoveled poop all his life; saw Christopher being born, as well as birthing more farm animals than I can count; and yet the idea of cleaning poop out of a potty seat has him refusing to be a part of it. I only cringe at how this will work out with our younger of the two, Timothy, who is only a few months old and just looks at Ben with a blank stare when he gags at what's in the diaper.
I also believed the books when it told me to prepare for a "slight mess" the first few weeks. Yeah right. If by "slight mess" you mean poop running down his legs as he plays jump the puddle with the pee puddle in the kitchen, then yes, it's a slight mess. I plan on finding the person who wrote that comment in the book, dragging them out in the street and kicking an apology out of them. :) In the meantime, all I can do is cross my fingers and hope my son will be potty trained by the time his third birthday rolls around in a few months. If not, oh well. Poop happens. :)
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