It's NOT time...

Well my dear friends potty training has come to an end. One day of pee-pee cleaning, naked boy running, patience wearing, soaked underwear was enough for me, but I learned a lot. Basically that I went about the whole process the WRONG way. Thanks to your comments, advice, suggestions, and my 1 day potty training experience, I have made a list of HOW TO potty train your child the right way and will be trying all this again in a month or so.

1. Child has to be ready
Obviously the first step is that the child has to be ready. Signs indicated that he was (saying he wanted a big boy potty, telling me when he pooped that he wanted to poop in the potty like daddy,etc.) and I still think he is, so ready or not here we come...in a month.

2.BOTH parents must be on the same page.
Since we-mostly I-started this whole process on a whim, Bobby and I had not sat down and come up with a game plan about how we wanted to go about this. Some couples are capable of one spouse making the decisions and the other spouse just going along with it. We are not that couple. Bobby wants to be fully involved in any and every decision that is made for our children, this being one of them. Let's just say we had differing opinions about which method should be used and Tyler was just confused most of the day about what was going on.

3. Be prepared
I didn't think about any of the things we had going on in the coming weeks (my birthday which was to be spent all day at bear lake, Bobby's mom coming to visit, going back to St. George for court-thank you blessed firework, etc.) and just figured if he's ready, I've gotta start. Wrong! It's true that the child has to be the one that's ready, but I think it's equally as important that the parents are ready. Some of you, actually probably all of you, can just flip some sort of switch in your heads and you become super mom, ready for anything. Not me. Anything of this magnitude (okay I guess P.T. isn't a HUGE life changing event, but it is BIG for me) I have to have planned out in my head so that when it comes I can be physically and emotionally prepared for it. Isn't this why women go trough a "nesting phase" when they're about to have a baby? Anyway, if you remember, I did the same thing when I was about to take the pacifier away from Tyler and when we changed him from a crib to a toddler bed. I set a date (a couple weeks in the future) that I was just going to do it and I did, and everything turned out fine because I had time to let my mind adjust to the change that was about to happen. I don't know why I thought I could do P.T. any different.

4. Have a method...and then a back-up method...and then another back-up method.
But don't use them all in the same day. I hadn't read any books, looked up any ideas, or sought out any advice until after I had already started P.T.-too late! I didn't have any one method in mind and tried out 3 different ones in the same day. Poor Tyler, no wonder he didn't know what he was supposed to do, I didn't know what I wanted him to do!

5. There has to be an official "start".
Last Thur. I decided now was as good a time as any to begin P.T. so after Tyler's nap we went to the store and Tyler picked out a potty, big boy underwear, and some rewards. We went home and had him sit on it a little that night, and after his bath but he wore a diaper to bed. I really like the idea of "kicking off" potty training by Tyler physically giving his diapers away, as a present, to a baby and making a big deal out of him NOT wearing diapers anymore because they're just for babies! And then once you start, being committed to no more diapers. And it sounds like, from the advice from most of you, that this includes bed time!

6. Rewards/No punishment
I have to say, even though it was frustrating cleaning pee off the floor after he sat on the toilet for an HOUR (his choice BTW not mine), chasing him around all day telling him it was time to go sit back on the potty, and not having him "go" even once in the toilet, I was really patient with him and never yelled, got angry or punished him for "going" on the floor. I really like the advice someone gave me to try your best to have fun with it. They said that if you get angry it only makes them want to use the potty less, but if you get overly excited about them even trying than they want to use it more. As for rewards, since I didn't have time to come up with anything really creative we just bought him dum-dums at the store (his choice) and they sat in a jar next to his potty. We are definitely going to have to do something more than/along with that (I'm thinking maybe a sticker chart or something because he LOVES stickers) because the dum-dums did NOT do it! I don't want to do too much though because then it becomes less about seriously just getting the potty training done and more about having a party in the bathroom.

Before we left to buy his potty I asked him what he thought about getting a big boy potty and he said, "Awesome!"


Setting up his potty in the bathroom


Checking out his new dinasour underwear in the mirror


So we'll try this all over again pretty soon. He was really excited about it and asked all the next day where his potty was. I figured it was better that I cut it off after one day of trying than going for 3 or 4 days, putting him in a diaper for a day, trying again for a week or so then Bobby's mom being here and putting him in a diaper when we travel to do things, etc. And it's so warm outside that Tyler wants to be outside EVERY day-can't really blame him. So who knows what will be going on in our lives a month from now, but we shall see...