Monday, September 1, 2008

Potty Training Begins

Ethan's preschool teacher is pretty adamant that she can have him potty trained in 2-6 weeks, despite the fact we've told her we don't think he's really ready. So, we thought we should probably try to get with the program at home to see for ourselves if he's ready for this or not. He's been wearing pull-ups during the day for a while now, because they practiced sitting on the potty in his last classroom as well, but he only occasionally actually went potty in the toilet there.

Last week he started talking about wanting to wear underwear, so we decided to give it a try today, since we were planning on just being at home. We put him in his undies and set the timer for 15 minutes. Each time it went off, we took him to the potty and let him sit there a bit (reading a potty book, singing the ABCs, etc.). This morning he had numerous accidents and didn't potty in the potty once. This afternoon, he didn't have any accidents, but he still didn't potty in the potty.

While Rick and I were eating dinner (and Ethan was playing in the den) he had two accidents in a row (#1 and then #2--oh joy). So, clearly all the attention was making him want to hold it in. We'll go back to pull-ups for daycare tomorrow and I guess we'll just see how he does.

As with every journey, you have to start somewhere, so we've set our feet down on this path. We'll keep plugging along. We're really in no hurry, we just want to do what we can to help, or to find out if we need to put our foot down with the daycare people.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ditto for Max. Chloe trained herself in roughly 2.8 seconds, but no go for Max. Since we are home on Fridays, I will do the same as you did here every few weeks... with the same result. And we're down to maybe 3 or 4 diapers a day (hoping he might decide it's not comfortable... ha!), but nothing. We had two days in a row last week where he wanted to go and did, but that's now a thing of the past as well.

Cris said...

Good to know we're not alone. Ethan isn't bothered by wet/dirty diapers at all, and he NEVER wakes up dry from the night or from nap. His new teacher seems like a potty training nazi to me (it isn't required that he be trained to be in his room, but they don't really have changing facilities--so last week he ended up with BAD diaper rash because they weren't really getting him clean). So, I'm probably in for a discussion with the director here pretty soon.

Kristi said...

I think a big sign that they are ready is when they are waking up from nap or night with a dry diaper. That was a big clue for us that he physically could do it when he finally showed interest. It may be that he's physically not able yet - and some people just don't get that things happen for different kids at different ages - they get stuck on that "3 years old" arbitrary deadline.
Hang in there!