Adventures in Potty Training: Part 1

Part 1 only applies to the blog - we've been attempting this off & on for a while. I said from the very beginning that I had no idea what I was doing when it came to potty training. Logan shows most of the "signs" that he's ready to train and we've had a potty for him in the bathroom for quite a while now & he has never been opposed to sitting on it - he seems to like it actually. I've read & heard bits & pieces of potty training tips and advice here and there and a few months ago we tried it out and just put in him underpants and ran him to the potty every time he wet his pants - trying to make the connection and teach him what was supposed to happen. I even tried demonstrating with a doll. Well I gave up after a couple of days of cleaning up mess after mess and figured he wasn't ready yet.

Now its a few months later and I wanted to try again b/c with Tolan in diapers too, most days I just feel like a one-woman diaper assembly line. So I decided to try a little different approach this time. We made it official and took the diapers out of the cabinet together and packed them away (but still accessible to me for him wear at bedtime) I also presented him with a fancy chart that I had made with stickers for progress and decorated with baseball stuff to make it cool. Then we had the doll (which I had put into a diaper a few weeks ago) take off the diaper and use the potty (with much excitement & praise from me) then we put underpants on it, praised it some more and gave it a piece of candy. Then I explained to Logan that if he used the potty too, he would get some candy and a sticker for his chart, just like the doll. Well, he just thought all that was great! He loved the chart and thought it was funny when I praised the doll & gave it candy. But let's face it, it was pretty ridiculous. Justin even admits he was sad to have missed the whole charade.

So after about 2 days of this, the candy was completely forgotten b/c we never got that far and the chart was just a distraction. Every time he sat on the potty he just got right up again to look at the stuff on the chart. We were still cleaning up mess after mess and Tolan was just crying outside the bathroom door while I had Logan sitting on the potty and rinsing out the underpants. I just kept thinking there has to be a better way! There's no way I can do this over & over for weeks, months, whatever. It's exhausting and frustrating, probably for Logan too. We did seem to make some progress though - he did start heading to the potty on his own and tell me "potty" (after already being wet). But we weren't making the connection to go to potty before the wetness and I had no idea how the help him make the connection either. Maybe if I had more patience and toughed it out a little longer he would get it. I don't know, but I couldn't see myself going on like this, with poor Tolan crying at the door and I still wasn't sure I was doing it right.

Justin & I recently took 2 different personality tests, you know, with the different colors of personalities, etc. And I already knew this about myself, but they both said that I like things explained and laid out step by step, and I felt like this is what I was missing with potty training. I wanted to know exactly what to do. So I went in search of a book and ended up downloading one for $6 off the internet. According to this method, it should not take weeks or months and it does tell me exactly what to do. So I'm all ready to try Potty Training Part 2 tomorrow. I have a couple of concerns with the method, but I'll just try it anyway and see how it goes. Wish me luck & stay tuned!