We are in the midst of potty training out 20 month old son. I know at least 75% of you are like, "omg! 20 months, way too young!"
Let me explain my journey and it will make more sense.
We started out doing Elimination Communication when he was 4 months old and it went really well, by 6 months of age I was reliably peeing him through the night, meaning we did zero night time diaper changes and he was dry in the morning. Around 9 months of age about 90% of the time he didn't pee all night and that has increased to pretty much 100% percent of the nights by now. He also hasn't peed during naps since his newborn days. I think some of this was him, but I think a huge part of it was that he changed his diaper as soon as it was wet and were very clued in to when he was peeing and pooping and were able to notice stuff like this. He also was down to pooing once a day by 12 months of age.
But also around this time (10-12 months) he started fighting me with the potty. He would arch his back and cry and basically refuse to use it. We went from catching several pees a day to catching 1 pee a week, on a good week. I started reading a lot about EC and a lot about potty training, particularly early potty training. Around 14 months old, he learned to walk well and finally we were consistently catching the morning and after nap pees. I thought we had turned a corner and could keep increasing the EC and just go with that, but it all went wrong.
He became increasingly frustrated when I brought him to the potty in the morning. I KNEW he had to go, after all he hadn't peed in a good 10 hours every morning. But my kid did NOT want to sit on the potty to pee. Crap. Crapcrapcrap!
So I gave up completely, I think it was when he was about 16 months, after about 6 months of not seeing anything really good come of EC, I gave it up completely. But not without reading about potty training. Because I knew what we were going to do was going to look more like potty training than EC. After 18 months, EC is really out and potty training is in. At least don't try to START EC after 18 months, is what the experts were saying.
What I've been reading is that you really have to believe that your child is capable, not ready. They talk way too much about readiness and less about capability.
My son is dry through his nap, dry through the night, poops once a day, understands many things, language is increasing, he knows where things belong... Doggonit! He can do this. We even thought about starting at 18 or 19 months, but put it off until I had two weeks that were pretty open. Which corresponded with a start date of Monday, February 18.
We are doing it without power struggles, without rewards, without threats or punishments. We see this as a kind of HUGE thing he has to learn that will take time. But we see it as a thing he is able to learn at this moment. From reading many stories I'm not convinced this will be easier if we wait. This has to be done. We might as well do it now. And yes, we might end up calling it off and re-diapering him for a month or so and doing it all again. But not on Day 4. I feel like we need to give it these 2 weeks we have, which end with my 30th birthday, and if on March 3rd I am a mess, and Cedric is a mess, and we just aren't seeing the progress, then we will stop, and restart in April sometime.
I'm already wishing we had done this after the snow had melted, but oh well, next kid. This is why we have two of them, right?
