That’s right, I’ve gotten back on the horse that so violently threw me off a few months ago. I’m taking another pass at potty-training Daniel.
The recap, in case I never quite finished the story here, is that we did a “boot camp” with him about two weeks after Rebecca’s. He did quite well for the first week. Minor accidents, but plenty of success. Wohoo. And then a week passed, and it all fell apart. It was like he simply stopped caring, or stopped paying attention. He’d have a success or two in the morning, and then it would be all downhill the rest of the day. After more than a week of that nonsense, I decided it wasn’t worth the stress/power-struggle and put him in Pull-Ups full-time. Mainly because they’re easier for the times that he actually did want to use the potty. Which, as it turned out, he did not. Zero interest. And when there’s absolutely NO potty usage, Pull-Ups are just a very expensive and messy pain in my ass. So we went back to diapers.
Anyways, some time has passed, and changing the diaper of a nearly-three-year-old is getting rather tiresome.
I asked Daniel yesterday what he would think about wearing big-boy underwear and using the potty. Previous questioning along this line has been dismissed with an uninterested “no.” Yesterday: “Oh! Yes! I would be very happy!” Um, OK. And up he ran to the dresser to choose his big-boy underwear.
And, so, we have begun again. For the moment, I am not going the boot camp route. We’ll do underwear when we’re at home, diapers when we go out and when he sleeps. I don’t trust him in the slightest to tell me that he wants to go, so I’ve been setting the timer on my phone, and he knows that when it “boings,” it’s time for a potty break. In a day and a half of being part-time in underwear, we have had no pee accidents and one poop accident. That didn’t phase him in the slightest. He did not feel the need to mention it when it happened (on M’s watch, I might add), nor did he seem like he was trying to hide it in any way.
That’s the biggest potty-training obstacle for Daniel & me. As excited as he is to wear big-boy underwear, and he is quite excited, he just doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the accidents. With Rebecca, her accidents got her quite distressed. Daniel? Meh, whatever.
At Target today, we picked out some special Lightning McQueen stickers that I plan on using for a special potty sticker chart. He’s a big fan of ice cream, so I’m thinking 10 stickers and he can get a treat from the ice cream truck or something. Just in case, I got the 2-lb bag of M&Ms, too. [As a side note, Rebecca wanted her own Tinkerbell stickers. Trying to think of a sticker-chart-worthy behavior for her, since she's already got potty training in the bag, but is clearly perturbed at the sudden focus on Daniel.]
On tomorrow’s shopping list – a few bottles of wine for Mommy.
He won’t go to college in diapers, right?
We kept up the potty training sticker rewards with Nate even though he was trained months before Alex. AS SOON as Alex started getting positive attention, Nate started getting jealous. He would even pee on the floor or on the toilet seat bc Alex did it.
A YEAR those sticker charts were up in our kitchen. We told the boys when they are 4, they don’t get poop charts anymore.
Good luck with round two. Alex never cared about poop accidents either
until the teachers at school were very forceful with him about it being a bad bad thing 
.-= LauraC´s last blog ..Brain dump =-.
I wrote a whole series on my blog entitled, “Tales from the Little Potty”
What finally worked Feb of THIS YEAR (note Ben turns 4 in June) was tag teaming with the teacher at school and using some…let’s say creative reinforcement. By that she began to take him over to the toddler house at school whenever he pooped on himself making a big deal about all the fun he was missing in his big boy class because he was with the babies getting his diper changed.
We had tried it all advice: stickers, special toys, underwear, even visiting a specialist in cog dev to make sure that it wasn’t a physical problem. It literally took a little Scarlet Letter action to help him see that pooping is for babies. to this day he is super fasinated to talk about who poops, why they don’t poop on themselves, and always wants to watch me change Ian.
Good luck as every friend I know can tell you this was a MAJOR roadblock in parenting for us.
.-= heatherv´s last blog ..The First Rule of Fight Club…. =-.
Oh, I do hope this time goes better for you. It seems your approach of underpants at home and diapers on the go may help in saving your sanity. (And I’m sure the wine will help too!)
We’ve decided to press ahead with Buba, who continues to do well as long as we remind him about needing to use the potty. Today he completely shocked me by telling me that he had to go, not once, but twice! He only went one of the two times, but at least now he seems to be thinking about it on his own.
When we trained Tiny, we didn’t really do a reward. She found flushing the toilet to be great fun, and so that served as her reward. But with Buba, he needed more than that. So we entice him with “jelly beans” (we started with jelly beans because that’s what we had in the house after Easter, but quickly switched to yogurt covered raisins). Since Tiny has been trained for months, she doesn’t get a “jelly bean” for using the potty, but she does get one every time Buba is successful, which has made her very encouraging of him in this process.
Good luck! Can’t wait to hear how Daniel does this time around.
.-= reanbean´s last blog ..Potty Training: I Wouldn’t Use the Word “Trained” Yet =-.
All these comments reinforces my suspicions that girls do better than boys – just naturally. I know Ned could care less about it but Penny is very interested in the toilet, wiping, having her diaper changed, etc. We’ll probably do her first at some point this winter. Ned, well, like you said, he won’t be going to college in diapers.
.-= Mommy, Esq.´s last blog ..Animal Play =-.
So not looking forward to potty training my little guy. We’ll do a naked weekend over the summer and see how it goes. And hopefully, my four and a half year old will start waking up dry in the morning. The kid is like a camel during the day, but still needs pull ups at night…
.-= Kami´s last blog ..(Not So) Dear Mirena, =-.
Jonathan=Rebecca, Faith=Daniel. We are in the same boat my friend.
I am thinking of giving Faith a sticker chart for picking up her toys, helping when asked, etc. as she currently is getting no extras and Jonathan is a pro at filling up his chart. Although he is happy to just fill up the chart, and doesn’t expect anything else! I did give him his own pack of gum and you would have thought I took him to Disney!
I wonder if your kids are like this…Jonathan is the kid who likes to make me happy. Faith like to make herself happy. If has carried over into potty training…and yes, he is a boy, and he figured it out first, and apparently we are weird.
…that’s what I keep telling myself about our girls (16 months old) and their refusal to drink from sippy cups…they surely won’t be packing bottles in their kindergarten lunchboxes, right?!
Not only does wine sound good, but so does a 2-pound bag of M&M’s!