The Great Potty Training Experiment- Part 1.

Well, after much hemming and hawing and putting things off, Alexander’s renewed interest in the subject has finally sealed his fate. It might be a little ‘early’ and maybe this experiment will go down in the books as a dreaded “false start” but we had to give it a shot. He pretends that all his little people go potty all the time, and while he had the concept down months ago, he just wasn’t mature enough to spend the time on the potty. But he’s asked to go several times, and has learned to use his muscles to make things happen. So when he asked to do ‘potty training’ we decided just to go for it. Besides, I have the time now to commit to it before the little one arrives, and Alexander has been making a lot of differentiations between things that the baby will do and things that big boys do, so it just seemed to fit.

Prep:
So last Wednesday, I told Alexander that we would start potty training tomorrow. We went to the store to get a new potty for the downstairs (so we could have one on each floor), and some protective training pants (we call them bubble buns) so he could still get the cotton feel when we needed soak-thru protection (he already had some cotton training pants from Christmas), and of course the much anticipated POTTY TREATS! A big fan of Ezzo and Ezzo and the Parenting by the Spirit series, they suggested Potty Training 123. Which I’ve learned is a great deal like the “train in a day” book. I did not expect Alexander to train “in a day” which has turned out to be a very realistic expectation. But the concepts have been definitely worth the read!

Days 1-2- Thursday, Friday:
I will sum up these two days in one word: exhausting. Alex, though ecstatic about having Curious George train with him, and thrilled about the treats for staying dry not just making “tinkle” in the potty (which I thought would work really well with him, since sometimes he is so eager to please that he will sit on the potty indefinitely until he has some sort of drop to feel successful) I think got overly hyped about it all that he forgot how to make “tinkle” on the potty, and try as he might he couldn’t make it work unless by chance. He had a couple of successes- probably enough to keep him keeping on. But needless to say we washed a great deal of clothes those two nights. He would sit on the potty for seemingly forever, then go as soon as he had his pants back on. We even had a fun episode in the basement where I let him run pants-free so he could get to the potty quickly if he needed to and wouldn’t go in the cotton. But he sat right down on the bean bag to go… and did. We emptied out all the little Styrofoam balls to wash the cover, and Alexander (and Tatou) discovered that the static electricity made them very clingy and great fun to play in… The pictures do not do the situation justice. David and I could only laugh.