More on Potty Training

I failed.  I failed to potty train my kid by 2.5 years.  I'm OK with that.  There are no guarantees in life.  Some people don't even try with boys until 3 years and I didn't want to do that, so I started early.  Not too early in my view.  But it didn't work out.  He got pretty far and then it stalled.

Then I got pregnant.  Willingly and planned!

The transition for him was a lot.  I weaned him, I moved him to his own bed in his own room.  I started a more firm bedtime.  All of these were good things that I needed to do, but it disrupted potty learning.  Not a little.  A LOT.  To the point of nothingness.  Not a few more accidents; getting nothing in the potty for days.  When you reach that point, of course, you go back to diapers full time and take a goddamn break.  And if you are pregnant and me, you cry about it and feel like a failure.  And then you move on.

And then he got better, on our trip to Arizona it picked back up again.  We peed him in to tons of public toilets, it was great.  And we kept it up when we got home.  He wasn't potty trained, but we were getting stuff in the potty with hopes it would keep up.

Then his language skills took off suddenly.  Like one day he was barely talking and the next he was talking a bunch and it grew and grew.  And he also started completely refusing the potty again.  So we stopped asking and now I was in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy.  I started to feel like he was really ready, like ready for completion sometime in November, but I didn't know whether to do it or to wait.  I wanted to do another intense potty training where we watch him for like 3 days and get him to the potty and make our expectations clear.  But I didn't know if I was capable of doing that physically and mentally during the end of my pregnancy.  But then I was also wondering if I'd be capable of doing it after I had a baby.

Then slowly he started hating the diaper, screaming about having to wear a diaper.  Shit.  This is a fair sign that one is ready to be potty training as he was almost literally telling me he didn't want to wear diapers anymore.  I had to make a decision.

So today when he refused a diaper, I left it off and let him go bottomless and when he started peeing I moved him to the potty and he peed in the potty, twice.  And he pooped while standing on a chair, but I moved him to the potty after and he sat on it for a while and peed a little.  OK kid, you win, we are potty training now, at 34 weeks of pregnancy.

I think, at the very least, this time my expectations will be low.  I don't think I will freak out if it doesn't fully click with him because I have too much other stuff on my mind.

So did I start too early initially?  I don't know.  I think he learned a lot from it, but it didn't lead to completion.  I do think I have a later bloomer on my hands for some of this stuff.  But at the same time the historical evidence is that most kids were out of diapers around age two 50 years ago.  So it is possible.  And I really, REALLY, do not think it is harmful as babies around the world are often not in diapers much past a year, or even 6 months (they use elimination communication).  Coercion and punishment is harmful, not potty learning.  And luckily I was used to people thinking I was crazy for doing some weird parenting thing that "no one else does."

I also think there is an accumulative effect.  I think doing EC and attempting an earlier potty training helped him over all with awareness.  And still no diaper rash!  And I know we saved on some diapers.  Plus I learned to not freak out so much about potty training; by freaking out about potty training.  I think with my next kid I will be more calm.  I'm sure I am partly to blame for his lack of potty ability, mostly the getting pregnant with his sister thing.  But I also strongly believe that it doesn't really matter who or what is to blame for anything, things happen. 

I also like that we didn't fully give up, even when we took breaks, we restarted when we saw the opportunity and chugged right along without shame or coercion or bribes or rewards.  I tried a bribe once and my kid was so not into it at all.  That's the flip side of bribes, it puts the control into the child's hands.  We really tried to simply set the expectation that pee and poop go in the potty, just like we have an expectation that he doesn't climb the window sills or tables.  It doesn't mean he won't screw up, but it means we clearly tell him he must get down.  We tried to give him no choice.  And we did have some success, we must not forget the success we had.

And I still really love Oh Crap Potty Training!  I will still use that method for the most part, I'm just not fully embracing it while this pregnant, but I am totally using the overall philosophy.

Even if it takes another 6-12 months until he has reached completion at least I know I didn't give up or put it off for no good reason.  And I think I can finally be more relaxed about it and maybe that will help a bit.  I still think waiting for the classic readiness signs can lead you to a kid who is in diapers at age four or five.  Now that we are buying disposables, holy crap they are expensive, in someways we don't have the luxury of waiting for a long time.  It's like a phone bill every month that we don't need. 

Also, he's only 30 months!  We've got time before the majority of this country will think it is weird he's in diapers.  He peed in a potty for the first time on cue at 4 months, so that's pretty darn neat.