Potty Training

Last weekend Mom, Alyce, and I started on the path to potty training.  This is something we've meant to do for months and months but kept finding reasons for putting it off.  We thought about it as early as last March but with the birth of her brother Luke Alyce would probably regress and we wouldn't have the time to reinforce the training.  This fall would have been a great time to attempt it coinciding with her 3rd birthday, however I started my massive retaining wall project and didn't have the time to devote.  That brings us Christmas break.  We decided to wait until the new year so that all of the Christmas festivities had passed and we could focus 100% our attention on getting Alyce out of diapers.

Our plan of attack isn't grand on complicated.  Alyce has been going for long periods staying dry in her diapers and on occasion has used the potty repeatedly through a day.  When that would happen we thought we were on to something however, the next day all interest would disappear.  We decided that on Jan 1 we would take off the daytime diapers for good and put her in underwear.  We thought a quick switch would eliminate confusion and get her to focus on the new task at hand.

The experience so far has been good but not great.  Alyce has been using the potty fairly regularly and in the past three days has only had two accidents.  The biggest problem is that even though she is holding it in very well she either doesn't recognize that it is time to go or doesn't want to tell us she has to.  This ended up with Mom and I having to ask her on regular intervals if she has to go with her saying no 90% of the time even though she really did need to.  This lead Mom and I to change tactics by saying it was time to use the potty at regular intervals rather than asking repeatedly.  We are hoping that eventually this will change and she will take some ownership of her bodily functions.  If it doesn't we might have to revert to one final measure.

Before we started training, Alyce had the most success at recognizing when she had to go when she wasn't wearing any diaper and her bottom was bare.  Clothing changes and going to bed at night being the most common times.  If we were to change her clothes and her diaper was still dry if we left her half naked for a minute she would run into the bathroom and hop right on.  Yesterday Mom and I were both home all day and we decided to give the same thing a shot.  We were going to keep Alyce naked from the waist down to see if she would do things on her own.  Things didn't work out as planned.  Alyce went 4 hours without doing anything and when we wanted to get some pants on her (she was getting chapped cheeks) she didn't want to wear anything underwear or otherwise.

Sunday night we did have one great success.  Before we were heading out to Grams's and Papa's for dinner Alyce was upstairs with Mom on the potty.  Luke woke up during the process and Mom left Alyce to her own devices to handle Luke.  While alone Alyce eliminated all bodily wastes and was ecstatic about it.  She stood up when finished, looked at what she had done, and exclaimed "there are rocks in the potty!".  Mom and I heaped tons of praise on her and she was beaming.  She started running around the upstairs saying out loud that she went pee and poop on the potty!  She even ran into Luke's room where Luke was on the floor and told him what she had just done.  When that died down Alyce said to me that she was proud of herself.  I told her that I was proud of her too and gave her a big hug.

I'm pretty sure we've laid the groundwork necessary to potty train.  I'm interested to see how she does at school tomorrow where she won't have Mom or myself there to get her to pause for a few minutes to do her business.  They've taught kids of potty training age there for a long time and I bet they have a process that works for them.