When I make up my mind to do something, especially with regard to parenting, I do it. I hate being half-assed. I either decide I’m going to be very, very lazy about something, or completely obsessive compulsive. I’m like Dr. Spock and Mr. Mom. One minute I’m the sleep training Nazi, next I’m letting my kid having a snack of M&Ms and chocolate milk while watching 3 episodes of Dora in a row.
Enter the vicious world of potty training.
I had it in my OCD (or CDO if you’re Busy Mom) head that my son would be trained by the ripe old age of three. Enter Dr. Spock. Or Dr. Something.
First, I obsessively asked my son every minute if he wanted to wear underwear. Next, I twittered my few tweeps to see what the consensus of non-OCD moms were.
Then I made a decision. We were going cold turkey. Child-led, shmild-led, I had enough of diapers and thus, it was time to get rid of them. And as my husband said to my father, “she’ll be damned if this doesn’t work.” So we made the ceremonial visit to Target to procure the goods. You know, the tighty whities with various Disney characters on them. No tags! No Thomas! Of course they only had one freaking pack of Lightning McQueen toddler 4T left. Apparently, all three-year-olds are picky about who they wear on their ass. We scooped up the last pack.
And, we needed some bribery gifts. Gift du jour? More animals. Thank the Schleich g-ds the polar bear and doggie he picked out don’t have genitalia to speak of. I couldn’t deal with that. It’s bad enough the kid is diddling his you know what all day now that it’s free in the land of cotton.
That was Tuesday.
Yesterday was Day 2 of the Great Underwear Experiment. One trip to school in underwear, one poop on the potty, one nap and afternoon poop in a diaper, back to underwear for dinner time today, three loads of laundry later and I’m not sure how successful we are.
But we’re doing it, and that’s half the battle of parenting, right?
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Hang in there, he’ll get it.
I like your attitude… probably because I’m the exact same way. I wish you the best of luck!
Please refer to my recent post on peeing on the floor of Pottery Barn Kids:
http://www.workingmomsagainstguilt.com/2009/04/dear-pottery-barn-kids.html
We are in this thing together, friend!
This is how it used to be done before Pampers and Pull ups when Mom freed up the diapers for the next wee babe the Stork was expected to drop off soon.
We’re in the middle of it all as well, although we seem to be over the hump now. My only advice to you (well, what worked for us that is any of course every kid is different) — do your best to not pressure him. Ask him if he needs to go (once he starts to get the hang of it after a few days) and if he says no, let it go. If it has been many, many hours, then sure it is normal to put a little pressure on him to make a trip to the potty, but I know my sister and her husband were putting their little girl into hysterics because they were forcing her to go every 30 minutes and she hated it. She started refusing. It is AWESOME your little boy went #2 on the potty easily. That is usually the hard part! My daughter still to this day will often poop after her nap in her pull-up. I honestly think she is groggy and not fully awake when she does it. We just clean it up and move on! (P.S. Got the video in the mail this week. Thanks! Gabby watched it this morning and liked it!)
Best of luck. This one was a bear for us. (Actually talking in the past tense about the whole thing is a bit bold. Most of the hard work was me trying to keep my **** together while it all happened.)
And I couldn’t believe how much laundry I did. I mean, those tighty whities don’t take up all that much space surely?
I am doing exactly the same thing. I figured at 3yo it was time I am tired of changing pull-up/diapers. After the last one last week I brought the underwear out. It has been a battle he actually asks for a pull-up. I am trying the cheerios in the toilet, he prefers the floor. Sometimes he goes to the bathroom on his own and uses the toileteven when I have the pooty available, I ask every half hour. The laundry is going to kill me but I figure in three weeks we should have it together.