O hai.

Guess what? Potty training hasn’t killed me! I’m not sure I yet believe that it has, in any way, made me stronger. But I’m not dead yet.

As I talked about on HDYDI today, we went for the cold-turkey approach with Becca.  I more or less followed the advice given in the 3-Day Potty Training eBook.  Saturday morning, we said goodbye to diapers and put her in underwear.  I was then glued to her side for the next three days.

Holy shit, is that exhausting.

So, I kind of pride myself on having fairly independent kids. While I’m obviously with them all the time, we get out to a lot of classes and activities where they can do their own thing. I don’t usually spend an entire day attempting to entertain them.

In order to really devote my attention to Becca, I sent M out with Daniel for as much of the weekend as possible.  M did a great job, took Daniel all over the place, and they really had a great time. I think it was a nice weekend for both of them, and I was glad to not have any extra distractions. I highly recommend doing the same if you find yourself trying to do potty boot camp with one kid and not another.

We did pretty much whatever she felt like doing. Stamps, finger painting, puzzles, books, an extra episode of TV here and there.  I really wanted to pick my battles selectively and not get into too many avoidable discipline situations, so it was kind of anything-goes for activities.  As long as it involved staying in the house.

Anyways, if I tell you the first day by the numbers, it won’t sound so bad: one success, three or four accidents.  Yep, that’s it.  My girl can, and does, hold it.  I suspect that, in the long term, this will prove to be a very good thing.  But in trying to train her, it doesn’t provide a lot of “teachable moments.”  It’s a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting… staring… asking… suggesting… building tension… and then an accident.  So, while there was not a lot of clean-up to deal with, there also was no sense of learning or progress.

And I had a wicked knot in my shoulder and tension headache. Apparently you hold your head in a weird position when staring at a 2-year-old all day.

Day two was, in a word, frustrating.  Again, she can hold it for hours, so it’s a lot of waiting for a single event. Still, not a lot of messes. But also not many chances for success and reinforcement.  It was particularly frustrating as I watched her squirm and dance around and stall and distract and delay around lunchtime, when I knew she needed to go. She sat on the potty several times, to no avail.  Forcing her to stay put seemed like the wrong approach, but as soon as she was happily playing with trains… accident.  Argh.

In the meantime, she was clearly a little stressed by this big transition, and/or had picked up on the fact that I was trying to choose my battles.  Her behavior went, pardon the expression, down the toilet. Sass, attitude, throwing things, grabbing things. I went back to our usual counting of poor behavior and things got a touch better.  But a late-day accident sent her into over-dramatic wails.  In a sense, I was sort of glad to see that having the accident bothered her, but the histrionics were really not what I was in the mood to deal with.

At the end of day two, I was beyond tired and frustrated and wanted to throw in the towel. After a little time to space out and cool off after the kids went to bed, I talked it over with M and we agreed that this is a no-going-back kind of approach. If we give up and do diapers again, we lose our credibility for the next time. Best to just suck it up.

Going into today, day three, I was both steeled and nervous. No longer could I send Daniel off for the day with M, so now I had both kids cooped up in the house for another day, only one of whom was potty training.  But we may be on the upswing.  Morning had two successes and no accidents.  The naptime Pull-Up was dry (yes, we’re using Pull-Ups for nap and bedtime).  There was a late-afternoon accident that I tried to prevent but didn’t quite make it, and then another success before bedtime.  Three-to-one, the balance swung back in the right direction. Plus, the kids could entertain each other, so I could simply supervise much of the time instead of constantly playing cruise director.

Still tired, but spirits improving. I hesitate to call it an unqualified win, as all of today’s successes were led by me. I have yet to have her just stop, tell me she needs to use the potty, and then do so.  It’s been a lot of me watching her for signs of pausing, agitation, or other clues that she needs to go.  Sometimes she’ll decide to give it a shot, sometimes not.

That said, I declare Rebecca done with diapers. We aren’t going back. It will continue to be a work in progress, obviously, but she is now in underwear during waking hours.

And, so help me God, we are leaving the damned house tomorrow.  All of this staying in goes completely counter to my entire parenting ethos.  Playdate, here we come.

I’ll bring a change of clothes.

Tags: boot camp, potty training

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Toddlers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.