I'll admit it. I'm a lazy trainer. I know a lot of people are so fed up with diapers by the time their little ones have reached the year mark, but I've spent time in a house with 100000 kids who have all mastered different degrees of potty training and so I can tell you truly that I'd rather change diapers than have the floors and bathroom and such all need scrubbing daily because they smell like pee pee.
Which is a roundabout way of saying, no, I have not yet introduced my 18-month-old to the potty.
Most of my friends with toddlers around the Babby's age seem to have potties pre-installed in their bathrooms, and I've admired them because some are simply lovely. Yes, I called a potty lovely. But the idea of putting the Babby's tiny butt down on a potty seemed ridiculously forward of me - really, I don't think she'd have any clue what was going on. She'd probably be thinking "Oh, they got me another chair. Cool."
Add to that the fact that all of the Early Intervention specialists we met would casually say things like "Don't bother trying to seriously train until age 2," and you can probably see why the potty has been upstairs gathering dust.
BUT that doesn't mean we haven't been working on the potty training preliminaries. Potty training without some pre-req knowledge of bodily functions just seemed kind of mean, so we've been handling things in the reverse of what it seems like most people are doing. Instead of sitting her down on the potty and hoping she'll give it a go, we've been teaching her to identify when she's going. In the diaper.
Thus far, it's working. Most of the time nowadays, if the Babby has pooped, she walks over to me, points to her crotch, and says "POOP." Which is, I tell you, just charming in public.
And I hope to take that to the next level by teaching her to tell me when she's pooping and then finally that she has to poop. Until then, the potty will be making an introductory appearance in the bathroom so it's familiar and not scary and we might have her take a seat in the nude pre-bath. As for peeps, she'll say "peeps," but not while she's peeing unless she's nude and it has already come out. A process which, by the way, she finds utterly fascinating.
Yeah, we're definitely taking the slow and steady route with potty training too. Sure, he's had a potty and been sitting on it and actually peeing in it since he was 17 months old, but since he can't verbally communicate with us yet we aren't forcing the issue. If he can't tell me he has to go, we aren't ready for full strength potty training. I get excited when he does things like pat his butt and say "boo-boo" because he poo-pooed. *snicker* Lately "boo-boo" has also started including peeing in the diaper. Aside from identifying what he's saying, congratulating him for 1) noticing and 2) telling us we've just been trying to put him on the potty before bath or when we see he has a full bladder boner (omg they totally get those!). I nearly peed my pants the other night because he was in the middle of his bath and he stopped and touched himself and said "boo-boo" and pointed to the potty..so I took him out and sure enough he peed! Aaah the little things that excite us parents. *grin*
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Slow and steady wins the race. There is absolutely no reason to try to potty train before they are ready.
ReplyDeleteStephen's mother said that for whatever reason she thinks there's some sort of motor function development link between being able to walk upstairs with alternating feet and potty training. That all of the kids she's seen/cared for over the years usually aren't ready for potty training until they can walk upstairs alternating their feet on each step.
That was certainly the case with Cait.
I have a terrible secret which I'm going to share with you; my daughter was using the potty somewhat by this age and wasn't too far from mastery when I gave birth to twins. I deliberately stunted her potty development as I couldn't bear the thought of running to find a loo every hour with two baby twins in tow. She used it when in the house but not outside and was over 2 before I removed the nappy completely. Gosh, it was hard work. :O)
ReplyDeleteWe started doing the potty dance around 17 mths and we had success for about 2 months. But then i got lazy and we stopped. My son just turned 2 and back in June HE decided he was ready to sit on the pot and dragged it out during dinner and peed in it. I certainly think that slow & steady is the way to go for us lazy parents.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that she can communicate when she's made potty puts her way ahead of the game. Does she day "Poop" really loud? I wish I could be a fly on the wall when she does that!
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