potty training

[flea]

It's been most of a month at this point, I think, and if anything, we're behind where we were at a week into the potty training. I'm frustrated, and trying to be patient but not succeeding as often as I'd like.

Casper wears panties during the day most of the time. She wears pull-ups for nap at school I think, and a proper diaper for overnight. We have accidents at least daily. Casper doesn't seem to mind being wet; for example, she peed right after we got off the bus yesterday and was pretty soaked, down to her sandals, but couldn't be induced to hustle any faster to get home and change. She hardly ever volunteers that she needs to pee, and if asked will mostly say she doesn't need to go, so we're still plopping her on the toilet every hour or so, often over her objections. Sometimes she won't pee when put on the toilet to try, but will pee in her pants 10 minutes later, in enough volume that clearly she could have produced while on the potty. M&Ms are not motivational any more, alas. (Well, they're motivating me okay, but that's not the point.)

She is fairly fastidious about poop; she'll tell us when she's pooping if she's wearing panties, and we rush to the toilet but almost never make it in time. If she can, she saves pooping for times she's wearing a pull-up or diaper. So she has some control, but not as much as for peeing.

I think basically she has the physical skills required for being potty trained, but doesn't really care much about actually doing it at this point. She is pleased when we praise her, and we don't yell or act dramatically disappointed when she has accidents; we're more like, "Ooops! Well, let's try and listen to your body next time. We pee in the potty, not in panties." Occasionally she's upset about accidents, but sometimes seems not to care at all.

How do we motivate her? Is it a question of time? I'm getting frustrated with her, and I don't want to get to the point where my frustration is constantly clear to her, and make this a power game. But, two accident poops and one pee in two hours can make a woman frustrated. Especially when I'm pretty sure she *could* do this - at least more consistently than she is now - if she tried/cared.

Comments

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking it's a question of time and motivation (as you note).

I've heard many tales of kids being left behind in the little kids room at daycare suddenly deciding to poop in the potty so they could remain with their peer group. Peer pressure is good! (rarely, but sometimes)

Also a month seems like a very short period of time for potty training. I've heard tales of kids who got it that quick, but it took constant engagement with Emmett over the couse of a year to really get the pooping part down.

That year sucked. He was impacted. He had terrible painful diaper rashes because he'd poop and wouldn't tell. Oy. Bad flashbacks!

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

Also I'll note that whereas most of my Learning To Parent lessons involved enforcing discipline, potty training involved nothing but patience patience patience and slow going and kindness.

It's the last place you want to get into a power struggle with your kid. It's stressful to them.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

How do we motivate her? Is it a question of time? I'm getting frustrated with her, and I don't want to get to the point where my frustration is constantly clear to her, and make this a power game. But, two accident poops and one pee in two hours can make a woman frustrated. Especially when I'm pretty sure she *could* do this - at least more consistently than she is now - if she tried/cared.

Because I am lazy, I was just NOT willing to play that game with Chuckles. We kept her in diapers (pull-ups) while we did positive reinforcement (mostly stickers) for months; her performance was about like Casper's, but at least I didn't have wet & dirty clothes to wash. Finally my mom convinced me to go cold turkey on diapers during the day (and we switched to candy for motivation), and she had the whole thing down pat in a few weeks. Ever since then, she's only had accidents when she's tired or sick. But we didn't do this until after her third birthday.

[burrell.livejournal.com]

As loligo notes, many kids don't bother with potty training until after their 3rd birthday, so don't worry about it. If Casper is like Frances, she may well be motivated to learn after the baby is born. For Franny, it was an important "big girl" lesson and she takes real pride in using the potty. We still use pull ups at night, however. Since she still likes a big cup of warm milk before bed, I decided to put off potty training at night until she grows out of the milk at bedtime routine.

[stephl.livejournal.com]

I babysat for a 3-year-old girl once, who was the smartest thing ever, and blazingly articulate (for a 3-year-old). She would pee in the toilet, but if she had to poop, she'd tell me, and we'd switch her panties for Pull-Ups, she'd poop in the Pull-Ups, and then we'd switch back to panties, and dump the poop in the toilet to flush it (rather than just throwing out the Pull-Ups; er, I mean, the Pull-Ups got thrown out, not re-used, but the poop got flushed, to emphasize the point that that's where poop belongs).

And she was very calmly emphatic -- and dead serious -- about when she'd begin pooping in the toilet: "I am still three. But when I am four, I will poop in the potty, but not until then." Although she would occasionally poop in the toilet -- generally if she was already up there to pee -- and when she did, we would be sure to praise her.

The kid cracked me up all the time. I'd help her up onto the toilet and make sure her panties were pulled down enough to be out of the way. One time I must have lingered in the bathroom too long (I might have been playing with my hair in the mirror, or something), and she looked at me and said, completely serious-faced, "Could I have some privacy?"

I replied "Oh! Of course you may!" and scooted out into the hallway and shut the door behind me before I burst out laughing. (It was just her solemn delivery of the question that cracked me up. She was 3, going on 53).

[askye.livejournal.com]

It's probably just a question of time. My friend E couldn't get her daughter to use the toilet at all, E tried everything but her daughter just wasn't going for it. E tried every form of reinforcement, etc but nothing seemed to work.

Then one day her daughter came home from daycare, said she wanted to wear panties and never went back to diapers and barely had almost never had accidents.