Friday, May 27, 2011

I hate potty training...

There are very few things in life that I can use such a strong word for.  Hate just isn't a word that's in my vocabulary normally.  When it comes to potty training though, I use it. 

For some back story into my potty training adventures, click here.  It wasn't all that long ago we were potty training Ren and while he was stubborn about it, it didn't take that long for him to be totally trained!  We're talking even at night!  A was super simple to train.  She just woke up one day, proclaimed she was a big girl and would potty and did!  While we still have issues with night time wetness with her, she's never had a daytime accident since the day she proclaimed she would potty! This is a quick glance at potty training history in our family.

Enter CS.  From the word go she's been her own little person.  She typically laid back, happy, and rarely grumpy.  She would rather hang out with Mom or Daddy then her siblings.  She will almost bend over backward to please people.  Then we introduced potty training.

Oh my, has this been an adventure and not one I wanted to take!  She refuses to use the potty.  I mean flat out throws herself on the floor and screams when we mention it to her.  We've had the potty in the bathroom for a couple of months.  She was really interested in it for a while and even went potty for a while.  By "went potty for a while" I mean she would go #2 all day long, but #1 was a different story.  We tried everything to get her to go #1.  Sticker charts, pennies for pees, allowing her to pick a dollar store toy for each potty and NOTHING worked.  I saw more gray hairs appearing daily over this. 

So what's a Mom to do? Absolutely nothing.  Nope, I just calmly put her back into Pull-Ups.  She wasn't happy to go back into diapers, but I told her that as long as she refused to potty she would wear them.  I think I was pretty spoiled with the first two kids.  Neither one was overly terrible with using the potty.  CS is, as typical to her, her own little person and I'm hoping will use the potty soon.  Please?!?

I have some ideas as to why she won't use the potty, but I'm not in her mind so I don't know for sure.  I'll list them out and please let me know if they sound silly to you.

  • She uses a small potty.  While the other kids obviously use the big potty.  CS is shorter than the other two were at that age and has trouble climbing onto the big potty.  The couple of times I have gotten her to sit on her potty, she stares at the big one the whole time.

  • She's just too busy.  I never thought about this one too much until I realized how much we aren't actually at home.  I'm sure those huge potties at the store scare her.

  • She just isn't ready.  The other 2 kids were what most people consider "late potty trainers", so maybe she just isn't quite ready yet


Whatever the issue is, I'm not giving up entirely.  I know that she will eventually use the potty.  I take comfort in what Grammy said to me yesterday when I was whining on the phone to her about it.  She reminded me that "she's never seen a child in Kindergarten who couldn't potty, so don't push her".  That's very true and maybe I should just stop pushing her to potty.  Just like the other two, she'll tell me when she's ready (Dear Lord please let it be soon though, diapers are getting ex-pen-sive!)

 Do you have any suggestions or ideas?  Share please!!

1 comment:

  1. I like your honesty about potty training. I was really dreading it too with my son. I tried the Potty Train Your Child in One Day book and put on an exhausting potty party. I think it worked, but can't say I totally recommend the method because of all the intense work. Hang in there!

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