Potty Training

Well,  I don't want to jinx things, but I think I'm pretty safe to say that I have a potty-trained child.  The last time he had an accident was on Monday, when he went to Ms. Laura's house for the day.  When he is with me he very good about telling me.

Wednesday we went to IKEA with Chrisanne and Tenley all morning, and we made two potty stops while we were there and he didn't have any issues.  Part of my can't really believe it, my baby, who is clearly not a baby is 20 months old (Almost 21) and potty trained.  Like he doesn't use diapers anymore.  What is that?

It was quite the experience for us to potty-train him, though I feel like he was fairly easy to train (knock on wood). 

Just in case anyone wants to know how we did it, I'm going to write it here.  If not, I will have something to look at whenever we have another child to remember how we did it. 

First, right around 15 months we introduced the potty.  We put it in the bathroom, let him explore it and showed him how to sit on it.  We started just letting him look at it and get used to it, then we introduced giving him a mini-M&M every time that he sat down on the potty.  For a while, he sat on it a lot, and it was great.  There were days that he wouldn't sit on the potty at all, and that was okay too.  We also let him watch us on the potty whenever he wanted to, that way he saw what was going on. 

Then, we would only give him an M&M when he sat on it without pants on.  This lasted for a while.  Then one day, he sat down and I said "Finn, go potty" and he 'pee-peed' on the potty.  It was pretty exciting.  Then, he didn't go again for quite some time. 

Finn also has a very distinctive "poop face" so we knew when he was going.  We would start to try to take him when he was making this face, and then mimic this face when he sat on the potty so he knew what to do (the things you do for your kids!).

Another thing that really REALLY helped Finn was that Gus and V are here a few days a week, the fact that he could see Gus use the potty, and what he was supposed to do probably made the difference in doing this now, and 6-12 months from now.  He wanted to do it because he saw Gus do it. 

So, one morning he went on the potty twice, and it was a Friday so I just decided to keep going.  I stripped him naked and that was how he stayed for the next 4-5 days.  When he's naked he had no where to "put" his potty, and the kid does NOT like a mess on himself, so it worked for him. 

We used pull-ups during naptime and nighttime, which I think we'll continue to do for a while, though he has stayed dry for the last 3-4 nights and almost always at naptime, but I don't know exactly what the protocol is for that, so we will see. 

When we went out the first few times I put underwear on him (So he can feel it) and then a pull-up over that.  He also has a pair of cloth training pants called Charlie Banana that I've used several times when we have been out.  Then, we worked to get him used to sitting on the big potty too. 

Now, I just leave him in underwear and make sure to have extra underwear and extra pants with at all times, just in case. 

Thus far, he's only had one accident out in public, but he has told me that he has to go potty several times, and we have made it to public restrooms lots of times. 

Another thing that helped Finn is that he has a DVD called "Elmo Potty time"  Finn LOVES Elmo and when I saw this video I had to get it, and he watches it ALL THE TIME.  He absolutely loves it, I don't know if it helps, but he LOVES it. 

For the first two weeks, we gave him a mini M&M each time he had to go, and then made a potty chart where he could put a sticker each time he went.  After he went on the potty five times he got a prize out of the prize bin (Stickers were a big hit, hot wheels, books, animals, etc.  dollar store or dollar section stuff).  This worked really well.  We also made a huge deal about showing his chart to everyone that came over, and if no one was here he would show his chart to Ella and either Randy/I whoever didn't give him the sticker.  We also would call people and have him tell them what he did.  Our goal was to get him to feel proud of himself, and I know it worked for him. 

Last weekend we were gone a lot, and the stickers and prize bin just kind of fell by the wayside and naturally we eased off of them.  Now, we still do the M&M's, lots of praise and a prize/sticker at the end of the day for a no-accident day (and honestly, I think I'd do a prize at the end of the day for a mostly-accident free day too because I just would/will). 

So...that's what we did.  I think it worked really well and would definitely try it again (though I've heard that every kid is very different).  I don't know if anyone will want to know this information, but I will want to remember it at some point (hopefully), so feel free to not read if you don't want to (should have put that at the beginning, huh?).