I hate potty training. Things initially seemed to go really well--before she was even 2, Charlotte would frequently ask to use the potty. But since, oh, December or so, she's decided to vehemently oppose any suggestion that she use the potty, and when you ask her if she needs to go, you get one of the following: "No.", "NOOOOO! NO Potty!", "Not Quite", "Not Yet", or my favorite "I already did" (which means neither that she's used the restroom nor that she's necessarily wet her pants yet).
Lots of people have been telling me that having a new baby in the house will make kids rebel and/or revert to having accidents. Ok, so it's been 3 months now. She needs to get over it already. She actually has some really good days--over Memorial Day weekend, she went several days with minimal accidents (like 2-3 in a 4-day period). But as soon as she went back to daycare the next week, she was having 2-3 accidents a day. The problem is not just school--last Saturday she had like 5 separate accidents. When she was home with me on Wednesday, she was accident free all day. The next day, 3 accidents just at school. Today (another home day), she had 2 before 8:30 AM. For both of them, she claimed that she didn't have to go, and then wandered in to the bathroom while I was going, and wet her pants in front of me.
Bribes don't work with this child. Rewards don't work (I've tried candy, tv privileges, and brand new Disney Princess panties that she really likes). Threats really don't work--I think my husband's frustration (and subsequent volume level) helped contribute to last weekend's 5x a day wetting problem. Positive re-inforcement only goes so far--she seems to enjoy the praise, but it doesn't mean she won't pee on the carpet an hour later. Following some advice in one of our books, I'm trying to really downplay the accidents so she doesn't try to use them as an attention getter--it hasn't made a difference. There is no discernable difference in her behavior when she's wearing pull-ups vs underwear (though she tries to request "diaper changes" when in the pullups). About the only time where she's pretty consistent about requesting to potty and not having accidents is when she's out of the house with us--she's also generally agreeable when *we* suggest that she use the potty out of the house (she usually kicks and screams at home).
This is driving me nuts. Between the laundry (eew!), the carpet cleaning (double eew!), and the tantrums we have to endure, it's a good thing she's cute some of the time or I'd have strangled her by now (no, I'm not going to hurt her. But boy do I wish we could fastforward a couple of months...). I'm trying to forget that boys are harder in general than girls, and that with Trystan's birth defects, he could be harder than normal to potty train. Then again, we'll be pros by that time.
2 comments:
Good luck with that. It's not easy but it's great when it finally clicks. I feel your pain.
Agree with Amanda. It'll click, just be patient...she's going to just decide to do it at some point. Our oldest was 3 and starting to do pretty well when he suddenly regressed for about 2-3 months. And he also had started early, we thought we were done when he was working on it at about 2 and 1/2, but no...it's a long haul.
Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 the accidents went from infrequent (1-3 a week) to almost nil... The overnight training pants are even dry about 75-80% of the time now.
Don't believe all thst stuff about girls vs boys...I think it's 80/20 rule stuff..80% wishful thinking and 20% bad press for the other side.
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