Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Potty Training

So everyone always says boys are harder to potty train than girls. I haven't quite decided if I agree with this theory or not. We have one of each and although it is definitely different with each of them, I don't think I can really say one is harder to potty train than the other. Of course, we are just starting the process with our son so maybe my thoughts on this will change?

When we were potty training our daughter, we continued to have her wear diapers and we would just take it off to have her sit on the potty chair. We'd have her sit on her potty chair and we'd read her "potty book" while we waited for her to go. She had a Winnie The Pooh potty chart that I made her and each time to she went while sitting on her potty chair, she got to put a sticker on the chart. Once a row was filled up, she got a new toy. If I remember correctly, each row had 20 squares in it. I think it only took 4 rows and she was potty trained.

With our daughter, we didn't use pull-ups. We thought they were a waste of money so our daughter just wore diapers until the day she told us she needed to potty. Once we knew she knew when it was time to go, we started having her wear "big girl underwear".

Now, our son is a totally different child! Boy howdy is he different!

We've been working with him for a bit now. We would take him to sit on the potty chair numerous times but he would never go while sitting there. We tried to find a "potty book" for him too but couldn't find one we thought would hold his interest and explain the process in a way he would understand.

He too has a potty chart that I made for him. It's Disney Cars themed and he gets stickers to put on it. Since our son is different than our daughter, for him, he gets a sticker each time he sits on the potty chair, whether he goes or not, and then he was told if he actually went, he would get a piece of candy.

So as of last week, he had a lot of stickers on his chart but hadn't gotten to eat any candy yet, not for using the potty chair anyway. Then one night last week, we had our son sit on the potty chair for a longer period of time than before and yay, he went while sitting there! We made the biggest deal out of this too! We clapped! We made noise! You should have seen the look on our son's face! He had the BIGGEST grin!

He was SO excited that he wanted to continue to sit on the potty chair even though he had already gone. He wanted to drink his lemonade so he could make more potty. Lol. That child sat on the potty chair that night for an hour! We finally had to make him get up only to have him want to go back to sit on it again 10 minutes later!

We knew that as soon as he went potty for the FIRST time while sitting on his potty chair, that would spark something and make progress. Boy, were we right! After our son's bath that night, we put some training pants type underwear on him. They were the thicker ones with plastic on the outside. He thought they were cool! Well, of course he had an accident in them and was SO upset when daddy went to put a diaper on him because we didn't have anymore underwear like that with the plastic.

Our son threw a fit! He was SO upset and crying. He didn't want to wear a diaper. He wanted to wear underwear. Thankfully, I remembered we had some pull-ups in the closet that were leftover from when our niece and nephew were younger. I got those out and he was happy again. He had his underwear and he was so proud of them.

The next night though, our son wasn't doing so well with the process again and wanted a diaper back. Since he had been so upset over not wanting a diaper back on that first night, we decided we were not going to go back and forth between diapers and pull-ups. Even though pull-ups seemed like a waste of money when we were potty training our daughter, for our son, they are the route we are taking.

Our son is still doing GREAT with potty training. It is SO funny when he needs to go. Instead of saying, "I need to potty.", he comes to us with a smile on his face and says, "The potty is here." Then we race to the potty chair. Sometimes he asks for his sticker and candy, other times he doesn't even mention it. We are SO proud of how quickly he is making progress. He even tells us he needs to go when we are out and about.

We purchased some "big boy underwear" the other night for our son so that we'd have them when the time came that he was ready for them. Well, last night, he wanted to wear a pair so we put them on him. Oh my gosh! He was SO thrilled and happy to be wearing them! He didn't even want his shorts back on because he didn't want to cover them up! He wanted to be able to see them. Lol. He kept looking at them and rubbing the sides of them. It was SO funny! He was VERY proud to be wearing "big boy underwear".

So now, our son pretty much has one of the numbers down pat, number 1. Now to work on the other one, number 2. That's the number I really want him to do in his potty chair! LOL!


No comments:

Post a Comment