Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Potty Training is the Devil (Especially with a High Needs Toddler)

To preface this, before I get all the comments all saying the same thing: I know that boys take longer to train. I also know that it's not good to rush it, and I also know they tend to do better when they do it on their own time. BUT, we spent hundreds of dollars to enroll him into a Montessori school for the fall, and they prefer he be potty trained (most require it), and I am afraid that he won't be potty trained AT ALL and they will turn him away. So, for the three day weekend, I decided to give it a try. 

The plan: Sit on the potty for 10 minutes, off the potty for 20 minutes, all day long.

Day 1: This was a trying day, especially because I was on my own most of the day while my husband dealt with our rental property. I didn't expect the first day to be easy, but I also didn't expect it to be super exhausting either.

Now, Kaiden KNOWS he should pee and poop on the potty. This isn't our first time trying to potty train him. In fact, we started around 18 months when he was taking a lot of interest in it, and he did REALLY well...until he caught a stomach bug, which erased all his progress. Ever since then, he's becoming increasingly more stubborn about it. Because of that, we backed off for awhile, because it just wasn't getting anywhere. But, then he started to complain about his diapers and how he wanted to wear underpants, and he'd throw fits every diaper change, and really kiddo -- if you don't want to wear them, and you know where to go potty, THEN GO.

Through the day, K would throw fits when I put him on the potty. I moved the potty chair out of the living room and into the bathroom so he would be "bored" in there and hopefully just go in the potty to get out. Kaiden, though, is stubborn as hell, and he just holds his pee and poop to spite us. As soon as I put underpants on him, he'd pee. So, I stopped putting underpants on him and just had him run around naked.

The day ended on an almost positive. He had five accidents and four potties in the potty. While the day seemed much worse than it was, I realized that he did pretty darn well for his first potty day.

Day 2: Man, I thought this day would be better, but it was more frustrating than the first day. I realized on day one that Kaiden stopped drinking his water. My husband said that there is no way that he knows that drinking a lot makes him pee, but I think we underestimate K a lot sometimes. Day two, he hardly drank at all. He knew. He would also only let a few drops of pee out at a time, just to barely relieve himself, and then hold the rest of it.

By dinner time, he  hadn't had any accidents, but he also didn't really go to the bathroom (except for peeing his pull ups during naptime, which I'm not counting right now). Our solution? Before dinner, I sat him on the potty and tickled him! Kaiden thought this was hilarious, and it also made him pee a little more. Small victory!

At dinner time, though, he was sitting in his booster seat and was shaking with effort to hold in a poop. It was pathetic. We stopped dinner and put him back on his potty, and surely enough, he pooped! He was so excited about it that he stood up before he was finished and it dropped on the floor. That's okay, though! We'll take it!

Kaiden had asked at the beginning of the day, just after he woke up in the morning, if he could have ice cream for going to the potty. I told him that if he has no accidents all day long, I'd take him for ice cream. Well, we made it until the last hour of the day, and I put his underpants on...and he immediately peed in them. I really wanted ice cream too! Haha. But, after the day ended, we only had one accident, and that is better than before!

Day 3: We are still in the middle of day three, but it's going over much better than days one and two. He hasn't thrown fits when it is time to sit on the potty, and I even went to the store with him (he wore underpants with a pull up on top) and he stayed dry for our whole trip. Because he stayed dry, I let him continue to wear his underpants and pull up at home, and he is STILL dry, which is quite the feat!

I will let you know how it goes tomorrow, hopefully.

Oh! For motivation, we give him a matchbox car, a sticker for his potty poster, and a cookie -- and when he poops, he gets double that. It's not ideal getting so many cookies in a day, but he is very food motivated, and I want to keep his enthusiasm up!