ONE YEAR AGO TODAY, we held a three day potty boot camp for Nate. It was easy. We asked if he wanted to wear underwear, he said yes, had one accident and pee trained himself. We had read that poop training can take a few months longer, so we were prepared. Nate proceeded to hold it until his nighttime pull up for a couple of months. We took away his nighttime pullup right around the time to pool opened, forcing a poop standoff.
Nate beat us. He waited every time until he was in a wet swim diaper. Joy oh joy. Those times at the pool were some of the worst. Between Nate and Alex, I lost count of the number of wet poopy swim diapers we changed last summer. Someone pooped at every swim lesson (not me or Jon). I wrote a post on HDYDI about that lovely experience. When the pool closed for the summer, we tanked Nate up with fiber-rich foods and laxatives and within a week with no access to pullups, he was poop trained.
During that time, we tried many, many, MANY booty camps with Alex. All of them were disasters. One MORNING he had 12 accidents throughout the house. How does someone go to the bathroom 12 times in 3 hours?
Alex finally got motivated when they transitioned to the 3s room. They couldn't move until they were potty trained. We moved Nate up without Alex since Nate was trained. We explained to Alex he couldn't go to that room until he was trained and within a day, he was excited about potty training. He was COMPLETELY trained in a week and I wrote that we were done with diapers forever. HA HA HA!!!!
We went on vacation and Alex had a poop regression. After that he had accidents at home. He had accidents at school. After enough negative attention at school, he started holding it until his nighttime pullup. We went with the poop standoff plan, feeding him laxatives and fiber-rich foods and it did not work. We tried positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, ignoring the problem, EVERYTHING. In a fit of desperation, I even put him to bed with no pullup multiple nights and let him pee on himself all night. All he did was hold it even longer.
(By the way, if you ever want more assvice than will fill the Library of Congress, tell someone you're having issues with your 3 year old not being potty trained. Everyone is an expert on potty training.)
One by one kids a YEAR YOUNGER than Alex were being trained. Every blog post on "we're trained!" was like a knife to the gut.
A week ago, one of their friends moved to the 4s room. We told Alex he could not go to the 4s room until he started pooping on the potty ALL THE TIME. The next day, he pooped on the potty for the first time in months. We've now had a week of successes and we reinforce OVER AND OVER he can not poop in his pullup anymore (he does not have overnight bladder control). It's working.
It is safe for me to say, one year later, that WE ARE FINALLY 100% POTTY TRAINED. One year later. We have been doing some kind of potty training crap for an entire year. A YEAR PEOPLES.
And as I said on twitter last night, three day potty training MY ASS.
20 comments:
Laura, boys are notorious hard to potty train - especially pooping. I think they would prefer just to poop outside like their ancestors. The funny thing is that later in life they make so many jokes and obsess about it. Men/boys! As my MOT blogging friends have tried the boot camps I'm beginning to develop a philosophy that boot camp isn't for us. It would probably work for Penny (she tells us now when she's pooped, tries to wipe herself and carries her own diaper to the garbage) but there is no way it would work for Ned. So I've decided that they will do it when they are ready. I need to find out the pre-school rules but I think they only need to be trained by kindergarten. If our nanny feels like she wants to give it a shot earlier fine, I'll reinforce, but it isn't worth the battles and heartache. They'll get there - at whatever age.
When people start talking about training their 2 year old, I just want to flip them off. J is the opposite, though. If he has to poop, he generally makes it to the potty. It's the peeing he ignores.
The dragging on indefinitely just kills me.
Here's hoping to a regression free Casa Case!
First of all, CONGRATS! Second of all, the line "Three day potty training, my ass" is just perfect! Why does everyone think this is 'easy'? Every single kid does this differently. If anyone suggests to me otherwise, I'm going to point them to this URL. :)
It seems to me that potty training for boys is mostly a matter of motivation. The harder the kid is to motivate, the harder to potty train. I hope that Alex stays motivated.
I have to confess, I cringed at your tweet last night. It had JINX written all over it.
Oh, Laura. Assvice indeed.
Melody's coming up on her one year anniversary of being on laxatives. Jessica's started having one pee accident a day, three days in a row. I'm hoping today won't be day four.
Indeed. Three days is a crock, at least at our house.
Agggh. We are in the beginning of that stage now. 3-day booty camp went well but then it has been downhill from there. Can't wait to have twin BOYS.
Congrats though, hope you are done for real.
There really is nothing else in parenting like potty training, is there? Boot camp went spectacularly for Rebecca. Daniel showed such promise for the first week, and then I absolutely had to eat my words. He is in Pull-Ups full time and shows ZERO interest in using the potty anymore. I'm backing off for now, it was clearly not worth the fight right now. Will try again later, and then hope the peer pressure at preschool will finish the job. :-)
Does it help that I call it potty learning?
Maggie has been trained and she ended up going through a poop regression for over a month. It got to the point where we finally had to use a huge incentive. Earrings. yep. So now it has been over a month and we will be going to get some earrings put in soon. And I thought she was trained well over a year ago. So it was a shocker.
Boy oh boy is PT the hot spot. This past month has been J's first "accident-free" couple of weeks...and he'll be FOUR in 6 weeks. We bought him his first potty seat for his 2nd birthday. I hate all of the assvice!! My MIL insists that all of her children (boy and girl) were "completely" PT'd by 12 months. Which is a complete...well, a complete crock of sh--, pun intended. I have another friend with a May 06 little boy who somehow was PT'd at 2.5, and whenever I talk about how hard it's been to get J pooping on the potty she gets the smug "what's so hard about it?" look that I can't stand.
I guess your one consolation is that although it took a year, both boys are on the other side of it. I cringe thinking about the fact that we have to do this all again in a couple of years with Jr...
Awesome awesome news. My neighbor's son just turned 2 in November and she started "potty training." I laughed at her and gave her some assvice myself. "Don't even bother until he's BEGGING you to use the potty. Then you can start thinking about it." I'm hoping my experience with Seth will be completely different, in that I'm not going to worry one bit about it. (Ha ha ha ha ha!)
I feel like maybe my girls are ready to do some potty training, but your posts make me think we should wait wait wait.
I was trying to get Michael to potty train before Katie was born. That was a fail. So what does he decide to do 2 weeks after she is born? Potty train. Thankfully my mom was here to stalk Michael and the potty (ummm, I mean help me out).
I think playing Rump Shaker is in order!!!!!!!!!!!
Thinking you need to write your own ASSVICE to parents about potty training for those who believe it can be done in 3 days!
I'll be happy to write the forward or even a chapter as I seriously didn't think it was going to ever happen until we used the similar approach with Ben.
Deal... that is if you edit my work and shoot a pic of me for the dust jacket that makes me look fab!
Cooper has been day trained (thanks to my mom, she really did a lot of it during a week long visit to us in Massachusetts) since 2 1/2, but has yet to stay dry at night long enough to pull the pull ups. I am not ready to change wet sheets in the middle of the night, but it would be awesome to get rid of the pull ups.
Not enough exclamation points !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND DEFINITELY NOT ENOUGH SHOUTING EITHER!
Jake was SOOO hard to potty train. I cannot imagine trying to potty train TWO boys at the same age. I definitely think you should have it engraved on your tombstone. LOL! Congrats!
I feel your pain. Except that my pain went on for about 2 years. Oh, and I have the babies' potty training to look forward to. Whee.
I have been so sick that I took a break from the training. The boys still don't even want to put on the underwear. Everyone says to let them pick out the cute ones and of course we have but it is still a no go. My favorite advice is that they will do it when they are ready because that would be awesome. My fear is that it isn't true. I'm crossing my fingers over here!
I would have named this post "All The Poop That is Fit to Print!" Glad to hear Alex is all caught up and ready to move into the 4's room.
My pediatrician told me its the EXTRA smart kids that are the hardest to train.
We had a poop party the day Lana finally took the plunge--complete with party hats and chocolate cupcakes. (It was almost a year after she was pee trained).
Came over from Joanna's blog. K is 28 months old and just got moved up to the potty training room at daycare. He will be in there until he is 3 and potty trained. I considered the 3 day potty trainng guide and had to laugh at your last line on this one. That's what I figured! Thanks for sharing all of the adventures - it helps to know what is in our close future with our little guy!
Post a Comment