Potty Training a Child

Some of you might be wondering what we are doing potty training Gabe right now. I have a new born and am adjusting to two kids, not on the top of my list of things to do at this point. A goal by the end of the year, but not right now. It was her choice, not ours. She seriously woke up one day wanting to always sit on it. We thought, okay let's try it. Adam and I both decided that there isn't much worse SO FAR in parenting than potty training a child. It takes a certain kind of patience I think we BOTH discovered we don't have a lot of. Gabe is potty trained for the most part. She has a few kinks to work out still. Plus I think in my opinion it's like what they say about training a puppy. You can't really claim your puppy is potty trained until you go 6 months accident free. I feel the same about my child. I think after she's gone a while without accidents, I'll feel good claiming she is. We probably tried just about everything to get her to where she is. We did games, bribes, stickers, candy, toys, running around naked,and even threats to take stuff away. All the methods you've heard that "help them" didn't. The day I told Adam that if she wasn't progressing by the end of the week we were stopping and waiting, she came up and told me she needed to go. Wahoo! That was the hardest part for us, is just getting her to tell us.

After one of the longest weeks for us, we feel good saying she is doing well.

KINK#1- Outings are our biggest challenge right now. We can't get her to use the big public toilets. It doesn't help the first time we tried, was on an automatic flushing toilet. Yeah it terrified her, and we can't for the life of us get her to go on one. Can't really blame her, they are huge and loud, I'm surprised I don't fall in. She did let her nursery leader take her today at church, and hold her on it. (we were there too-they are supposed to come get you when your kid needs to go and Gabe kept saying she wanted her, so she offered to help) Except she didn't pee. She just sat on it. It lead to a puddle accident on the nursery floor later. We felt bad, and of course cleaned it up. We aren't wanting to carry around a special potty seat everywhere we go, so I guess we'll see what happens. We aren't fans of pull ups, so I guess we get to deal with the puddles. She is the kind of kid that if you convince her to do things once, you never look back. So if we can get her to realize that once she goes she'll be fine we'll be good. We are bribing her with the zoo, cause we had plans to go this weekend if it doesn't rain. Anyways, so we'll see if that works. So far, she just says, "okay no zoo." Silly goose, she's kinda over the bribing thing.

KINK#2- Now she keeps coming to me that last few mornings soaked. Not cause she went in her bed, but because she holds it so long she gets out of bed and can't make it to my room, and back to the potty without going. Not going in her bed has actually been her strongest point in all of this. I guess that's where we find the good with the bad. I think she thinks peeing her bed is a sick thought, and tries really hard not to do it. So that's nice. She even will come get me in the middle of the night if she wakes and has to go. I was impressed. So hopefully we can work through that one too. Plus it has been getting her up earlier in the morning to have to go (5:30) and there is no getting her back to bed after that. So lots of fun all around for all of us as you can see.

They say boys are harder, and I'm hoping that's not true in all cases, cause I'm not looking forward to that already. HA!
Anyway I could go into so much more detail, and info, but most of you probably don't care to read all that. We listened to a lot of opinions, tried different things, and just wanted to say we made it. She is doing great! Wahoo Gabe! We never thought we'd see the end to some of that. Wish us luck with the rest.