Potty woes

Potty-training is still underway at the Boyd household. The good news is that Lucy is making some progress. The bad news is that Mama feels the need for a mimosa by 8:00 am.

Each day, Lucy is having at least as many potty “successes” as accidents. And for Day 4 of “Potty”:/news/2008/potty-training-weekend/ “Training”:/news/2008/weekend-update/, that isn’t so bad. But I find that I’m starting to take the accidents a little too personally.

p{color:gray}. Photo: No standing on the furniture, either.

Now, I freely admit that I am a bit of a germophobe. And a control-freak. And a neat-freak. These are not helpful qualities in a potty-trainer. I have been trying to relax my standards, go with the flow, and just trust the process, but it isn’t always working. Since Lucy is a joyful, free two-year-old, she doesn’t seem too bothered by her accidents. “Oops!” I say, and she’ll agree to that, but then later she’ll laugh about it while I’m still grumpily cleaning up the mess and trying to console a crying Rosie from afar. I start wondering: Is Lucy intentionally having accidents to “act out”? Is she truly ready to potty-train? Does she really understand the concept? Or is the whole potty-training thing just too much pressure to handle? (That last one is definitely projection on my part!)

I’m just not convinced that Lucy is sufficiently motivated to use the potty. My latest theory is that the sticker-chart thing is too abstract for her. I’m seriously considering trying Raisinettes tomorrow. I don’t want to get her hooked on candy as a treat for using the potty, but I do really want to create a strong desire in her to pee in the right spot. Any tips on doing this well?

Probably the most stressful thing is the lack of control I feel. It makes me nuts that I can’t always jump up and be right there to help Lucy get to the potty on time, especially if I’m in the middle of nursing Rosie or something. And it makes me even more nuts if I do help Lucy go to the potty, and then she has an accident immediately afterwards. There just isn’t anything I can do to *make* her use the potty. That is probably a good thing, because I do want her to grow into a strong individual. Just not right now!

12 Replies to “Potty woes”

  1. This is exactly why we decided to wait a little longer before potty training with Benjamin. He just didn’t seem to get the concept the first time we tried – the thing that clinched it for me was the accidents that happened immediately after sitting on the potty. It was like he would get down and 5 seconds later pee on the floor. That said to me that he just wasn’t ready. I’m really glad I decided to stop and try again later because when we did try again later (right around 2 1/2) it was really easy.

    We did use M&M’s as motivation, but it didn’t seem to work any better than stickers except that he would go pee a little bit at a time to get more M&M’s (but still pee on the floor too). Even when I officially abandonded our potty training attempt, I still paid attention to cues he gave and tried to get him to use the potty whenever possible – I just had him wearing a pull-up instead of underwear or going naked. With this method he pooped on the potty pretty much every time from age 2 on and then pee-trained at age 2 1/2.

    One book I used was the No Cry Potty Training Solution. One thing that was useful from that book is that most children are not physically capable of independent toileting until age 2 1/2 or 3 (in other words, they can take themselves to the potty, take their own pants off and sit on it, etc.). This also helped motivate my decision – I figured if Benjamin was dependent on an adult to help him remove his pants and sit on the potty then we didn’t stand much chance for success given the fact that I was pretty busy with another baby!

    I’m not saying you should abandon your attempt yet – maybe set an amount of time you’re willing to try (a week or two) and then if you aren’t seeing improvement, reassess.

  2. Time for a song:
    “Its a great day to pee on the potty, Its a great day to pee on the potty, its a great day to pee on the potty, peeing on the potty is fun”!

    It can be so frustrating and personal. For us it is because she does fine at home, but at school she won’t tell them she needs to go and will wet just a little bit and then when they take her they don’t notice that her underwear is bit wet and now I think she has an infection. I guess she is like me and gets embarased about body functions. ahh.

    We also would use her fuzzi bunz without the insert so it would collect accidents, but was more like panties. We told her we were takeing the diaper (the insert) out and she would just wear the panty.

    just take a deep breath. :-) she will get it.

  3. Okay, I am a little hesitant to share the following story for fear that all my parenting will be called into question…but here goes.

    Naomi is doing well with the potty training this week. I was a bit discouraged after so many accidents last week…and then two in a row at my sister’s on Sunday evening…I think it was all the excitement, new place, seeing my niece who has given her all of her big girl underwear…

    Anyway, on Monday…she had a BM in her potty….yeah! She wiped herself…Yeah…I just just about ready to go finish things up dump things out…when I got a call about a friend in crisis…It is hard to multi task at time like this…so before I prayed with my friend I asked the boys where Gwenna was…oh she is sitting in her playing with us. Good I may have a few minutes to pray…a short time later Gwenna came crawling into where I was crying…with a very disturbed look on her face…Yes…she was covered in the remains of Naomi’s potty success! UGGH! I was horrified and not very gracious with my boys who were supposed to watch her! Andy said that he thought that we had survived that part of parenting. At least Rosie is not mobile.

    A little hint from my sister line the potty chair with a cheap coffee filter…makes the poop easier to remove…she even flushed them without a problem.

    Hang in there Ann. Again I am learning so much from your friends on this blog…Thanks to all of you…I do know that potty training is a process. And it really has helped to have my niece who is four cheering Naomi on. Is there a friend who could “help” Lucy in this journey?

    Right there with you.

  4. That’s funny, Nicole. Just this morning Ella peed in her potty, then stuck her hand in it and rubbed it on Benjamin who promptly started yelling “Ella put pee on me, Ella put pee on me!”….

  5. All of these comments are so helpful! Last night, I decided that we are just going to give this our best shot for a couple of weeks, and if it is still making me crazy, we’ll pull the plug for a little while.

    But things are going much better today! As of right now, Lucy has had ZERO accidents, and eight potty successes — including two poops! I’m super-proud of her. I think two things are helping: 1) one M&M for each success, and 2) no underpants whatsoever today. I think wearing cotton underpants are just too much like cloth diapers for her (Keri M “mentioned this”:/news/2008/weekend-update/#comment-5299 as something she experienced too). We even went to the library today without any underpants, just a dress. This, I believe, is one of the benefits of having girls — dresses for potty training!

    So, we’ll keep plugging along! Thanks to everyone for your encouragement.

  6. Ann,

    I just want to say thanks – for going through this before us. :) It really is helpful to see what everyone’s experiences are. Abby’s starting to get the concept of a dry diaper (we use jellybeans) but still has gone on the potty yet. I know she has control because she’s dry before and after naps, but still doesn’t go on the potty. She is showing more interest now that I let her wipe with some TP and flush the potty. Soon we will have naked butt days…

  7. I say hooray for M&Ms! We used them liberally. And I LOVE the coffee filter idea – ingenious! As for playing in the poop – there is just no way you are going to get past potty training without that happening. And the more kids you have the more poop you can expect to find in unexpected places. Go Ann! Go Nicole!Go Katrina! Go Jolinta! It has to end someday….

  8. Glad you are making it through Ann! This was the reason that I just left Kaia in pull-ups until she stopped having accidents (although there was a time we took those away, but it was after we knew she could use the potty and just wasn’t), they were still like undies, but caught the mess for us. Mo still just enjoys pretending, and really, while I don’t want to deal with diapers any longer than needed, I don’t want to deal with the messes yet.

    I for one wouldn’t blame you if you had the mimosa at 8 a.m. I think all us moms feel that way some times.

  9. I love m&ms. Today maddy came to me and said, “mom I made a big chocolate poop in my litttle potty, it stinks”. I love m&ms and potty training!

  10. End of day update:

    Lucy used the potty twelve times!
    Lucy pooped in the potty three of those times.
    Lucy had no accidents (unless you count pull-ups for naptime and nighttime).
    Lucy is very excited about M&Ms!

    Hip, hip, hooray! We are definitely on the right track now.

  11. We are a full-fledged M&M family! They work for everything…peeing,pooping,reading a word during her reading lesson, consoling Mama, getting everyone to be quiet while I’m on an important phone call…
    Hooray for M& M’s! I buy the monster bag at Costco.

    PS After a while of potty training Marie was doing it so often that she just kindof forgot about the whole M & M thing. Don’t worry, you won’t still be feeding your daughter M&M’s everytime she poops at age 30.

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