Maine Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
More on potty training
Owen is just not ready I guess. It's impossible to even get him to sit on the potty, to the point that sometimes if you suggest it, he'll cry and say, "I don't WANT TO sit on the potty!" I don't want to push him, MH sometimes does (mostly because he's really over cleaning the man-sized poops that Owen produces off of the cloth diapers). If he doesn't start training soon, though, we're going to outgrow most of the diapers. (I have some Fuzzibunz large, but I refuse to buy more.) I hate the thought of having to go to disposables.
So I guess I need your best potty training advice. At what point do I have to give up my laissez-faire attitude and start pushing him a little more? Ever?
Re: More on potty training
Helen didn't really potty train until age 3 years and 3 months. We pushed it at that point because she was one month from starting preschool and she needed to be "mostly" potty trained to attend. Fortunately, when we pushed it (by going cold turkey to panties) she caught on really quickly. She had maybe 3 or 4 accidents in the first week and almost nothing since then (and no accidents at preschool). We had so many false starts but like everyone says, when they're ready it works really quickly.
Now, she's still not potty trained at night/naps and she still has trouble pooping on the potty (she likes to do it in her pull-up at nap time) but she's making progress. We've had 2 poops in the potty this week!
I think it's really up to you and what you & YH are comfortable with. Jake was showing lots of biological signs of being ready (waking from overnight/naps dry, being able to anticipate having to go to the bathroom, etc.). We tried the relaxed route for about 6 months with him, where the potty was available if he wanted to use it, but he was still using diapers. For him, that didn't work at all and we kind of just decided to go hard core and get it done.
I impulsively bought a pack of Gerber undies one day, washed & dried them and then when Jake woke up the next day I told him that Target ran out of diapers and all they had were big boy undies. Up until that point, he had refused to even try on undies so it was my only option. He wore them without a fuss, and we had a very, very messy 3 or 4 days but that's all it took and he was potty-trained.
I was lucky that he HATED the feeling of having pee or poo in his undies so it was very motivating for him to get to the potty on time. The hardest part was getting him to stop playing and go to the potty. I made sure that the bathroom was a very happy place for him, stocked w/ books and a sticker chart (he got a sticker each time he tried, and got M&M's each time he went pee/poo). He loved the Elmo's Potty Book and would read it a lot while he went. We also had an egg timer go off every 1/2 hour, and when it rang it was time for a potty break. We definitely had battles still, but it was way better than when it was just me telling him. Also, if he had an accident then he had to walk to the bathroom and get cleaned up there. I figured out that if I just let him stay in the playroom and cleaned him up there, it wasn't disruptive enough to motivate him not to have accidents.
There's my extremely long-winded version of how we handled it. Best of luck - it's definitely not easy but you guys can do it!
Jake blowing out the candle at Katie's coming home party
Katie Belle
Kristen, Chad, Jake, Katie & Sadie the Wonderdog, est. 6/17/06
Helen is the opposite, which makes things tough. She absolutely does not care if she's wet and barely cares if she's poopy (mostly she doesn't like the smell).
One of our aborted attempts at potty training with cloth training pants and a waterproof cover ended after she repeatedly peed through the training pants and never said a word. She's walk around all day with dripping wet pants if we had let her.
Helen is the opposite, which makes things tough. She absolutely does not care if she's wet and barely cares if she's poopy (mostly she doesn't like the smell).
One of our aborted attempts at potty training with cloth training pants and a waterproof cover ended after she repeatedly peed through the training pants and never said a word. She's walk around all day with dripping wet pants if we had let her.
This is Owen. He will keep on going in soaking wet pants without blinking (although wet pjs bother him)...and he'll insist to me that he's still pooping in order to avoid stopping playing to get a new diaper. Apparently peer pressure doesn't work, because I think he's the only kid left in his daycare room still in diapers. And the Thomas underwear I bought him as a motivator sits in the drawer unused.
Kristen, I hand it to you for going cold turkey. I fear for my furniture, his clothes, our psyches, etc. etc....I'm too scared to do it. And I think he'd freak out.
Megan, here's hoping both of our boys have some sort of breakthrough soon!
Marcus does the same thing..."Are you all done? Can we change your diaper" ... "No, I'm stilllll pooooping" while he intently plays trains.
lol sounds familiar! (except Owen tells me "there's still poop coming out of my butt." ew.)
Our experience was a lot like Kristen's. Eli had sat on the potty here and there for a few months, but had never gone. We knew he was physically ready and we had almost a week to commit full attention to the process (Thanksgiving break), so we went cold turkey.
We made a big deal about his last day wearing diapers, how much fun we were going to have on "potty party" day. We decorated the bathroom, got musical potty books, and underwear, stickers and candy incentives (he got my sweet tooth, so this was a BIG motivator!) he was really excited about. It was seemed over the top, but it really got him excited and motivated. We set our kitchen timer for every 20 minutes for the first week and watched him like a hawk. When the timer went off we made a big, excited deal about it being "potty time." It was tiring and there were quite a few accidents the first day, but by the second day there were many less accidents and even those were him peeing a tiny bit in his underwear, stopping when he realized it, telling us, then finishing on the potty.
We didn't leave the house for the first two days and I was really nervous about taking him out, but we got a waterproof pad for his carseat and the covers for the underwear that I mentioned before. We made a big deal about how cool it is to go to a store or someone's house and polietly ask where there potty is and how fun it is to check out different bathrooms! He was accident free (for pee) within 4 days or so. Pooping on the potty took a few more weeks, so he would either have an accident in his underwear or wait until nap/bedtime and go in his pullup. Even now he doesn't often tell us when he needs to go, but knows we will take him every so often so he knows to wait. We're still amazed that it went so smoothly since he's so stubborn about most things!