As the title suggests, this is another potty entry. Not for the faint of heart or stomach. Proceed with caution.
I am so frustrated! We have been doing the potty thing when Ev wants to for a few days now with little success, so I figured that today we'd go whole hog. After breakfast (and the usual morning crap) I made Evan take off his diaper and put on training pants (cloth, like regular underpants, but "quilted" to give some extra protection to my rug should we have an accident). Ev was okay with these, but after taking them off to sit on the pot a few times he just abandoned them altogether.
This was fine by me, because he stayed naked all morning and dry all morning. From 8:30 until 11:30 there was nakedness with no accidents. I made him sit on the toilet a few times, but he never went, so I figured he was okay and just didn't have to go. He then asked to put the training pants back on, and that was good, until he promptly wet them.
So that's accident #1. Fine, no big deal, we cleaned up, tried the potty again, went back into a fresh pair of training pants. I asked him every ten minutes if he had to use the potty, and praised him for staying dry. Then the phone rang, and just seconds after I answered it I noticed Evan standing in a puddle. Accident #2, complete with ball of poop. Fantastic.
What it looks like to me is that he's good at holding it, and knows when he has to go. He feels free to go when he has something covering his butt, whether that's underpants or diaper or what have you. So if we could leave him naked all the time, he would never have an accident. And he's stubborn, so he'll wait until I put something on him so he can crap in peace.
That's what's so frustrating. It's obvious that he knows what to do and how to do it--he just won't. I'm tempted to take a few days off from this and try again later, but I'm not sure if that will help either. He's won for the moment--he's back in a Pull Up. But that's just because I have to do a load of laundry so he'll have training pants to wear again.
Posted by jenny at June 29, 2005 01:11 PMInteresting plight! So you're beginning to see a pattern, and that's a start. It means that Ev has a plan, and isn't just peeing and pooping haphazard, but only when he feels it's "safe", i.e. he's covered. Well, I know I'm no expert at potty training, God knows - I'm barely able to stay dry all day myself, but it would seem to me that from the pics on your home page, that he really seems to enjoy holding the hose.... most boys do. So maybe that might be the route you take, at least with the peeing end of it (pardon the pun). Have him "water" a flower you throw in the bottom of the pot! Hey, it's worth a try, right???
Posted by: Cuz'n Linda at June 29, 2005 10:57 PMI've been reading two blogs that are talking about potty-training a lot. You might find another's plight interesting: sweetney.com. Good luck!
Posted by: Amy at June 30, 2005 07:41 AMAnd now you know why my boys are alays naked!
Posted by: mikaele at July 1, 2005 11:27 PMWell, I have two boys. The first was very hard to potty train. Like your son, he knew when he had to go and could hold it. He just did not want to be on the toilet and told me this. I took a break, but when he was almost 4 and still did not used the toilet, I had it. I took the pullups away, and let him know that if he had an accident, it was okay, but he would be cleaning it up. That meant that he really would not want to go in his pants, unless he wanted to clean them. Well, he went five hours without using the bathroom. My husband came home and said, "if you don't go in the toilet, you are going to explode!" That is all it took, he ran in the bathroom, undressed, went pee, flushed the toilet and got dressed again. Hmmm I guess he knew how all along. LOL I would have never said something like that to him, so maybe men should do all the potty training. At least with boys. My second son, was using the toilet on his own at one, but I didn't take the diapers away until two because he didn't always know when he had to go, until age two. I guess each kid is different.
Posted by: Shannon at July 2, 2005 06:36 PM
