Tuesday, June 15, 2010

potty training

was a failure. I had everything ready today and was genuinely expecting good results. Potty Chair clean and ready? Check. Jude naked and cute? Check. Carpet cleaner handy? Check.

At around 10:30 I sent Shawn a text that read, "potty training round one: Jude=3; Mommy=0." Around 3:30 the text I sent Shawn read, "round two: Mommy=0; Jude =1. plus one bonus point for pooping on my pants."

I went with the naked method (having your child run around naked so that 1)You can tell when they're going potty, and 2)They can correlate the feeling of having to go potty with actually urinating) mostly because I haven't heard of any other way to do it. While Jude was super cute running around naked all day, he still didn't seem to get the cause and effect by the end of the day. Perhaps most disconcerting to me was that around 4:00pm he started walking strangely and getting really fussy. It took me a bit, but I realized that he was constipated because he didn't want to go "#2" in the potty. I tried a couple of times, but he just wouldn't go. I put a diaper on him while Shawn and I went to AT&T, and after about an hour he went just fine. I've read enough to know that it's not good when a child starts to hold #2 through the potty training process. If Jude were 2.5 or 3 years old I'd press through, but it's just not worth it at nineteen months.

I had originally planned on sticking with it for at least three full days, but our day was completely miserable. Jude was cranky, I was cranky, and not a single drop of pee made it into the potty. I could continue on and try it again tomorrow, but I have to be honest - it's not worth it. I'll keep the potty chair out and will probably even do some naked time when we have long stretches around the house, but I'm so not forcing this. I thought it'd be nice to not have two kids in diapers at the same time, but I already accepted it was likely. It looks like Jude will potty train in his own time.

Potty training, you got the best of us, old friend. You may have won this battle, but just know....we're comin' for ya. Oh we're comin' for you.

4 comments:

  1. Oh no!! That is such a funny/tragic story! I will admit I haven't read too many potty training books, but I think we're going to start when she's around 22 months. I heard somewhere that in between 22 and 24 months were good potty training months. I have no idea if that's true...but whatever.

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  2. I read a blog about parents of quadruplets (I know, whoa!) who just went through potty training. They had a particular system that she is a huge fan of now--figured you might find the info useful, and the blogpost about it entertaining :)

    http://thelifeofsuz.blogspot.com/2010/05/potty-training-quadruplets-101.html

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  3. I'm Patrice's sister in law and pop over here every once in a while. Asher, my 5 year old was 2 weeks away from being three when he decided he was ready to wear underwear. Before that we did a lot of talking about the potty and let him use it when he asked. Waiting until he was committed to it caused us a lot less frustration. I did the same thing with Ainsley, my 3 year old. She decided when she was 27 months that she wanted to use the potty. Within the week she was 100% using the potty without mistakes.

    Asher still uses a pull-up for bedtime...common for little boys, but Ainsley can make it dry throughout the night, no problem.

    Don't worry. When Jude wants to use the potty, he'll do it. And boys usually learn a little later than girls.

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  4. Melissa, I've heard that stat too. Our baby is due when Jude will be 21 months though, and since there's no way I'm going to try to potty train Jude then I thought I'd try before hand. Lauren, that blog post made my day - thanks for sharing! And thank you for the encouragement, Amy. I'm reminding myself that you never se a 28 year old wearing diapers because he was never potty trained. Jude and I will figure it out when he's ready. :)

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