Last Monday started our 1st official day of potty training and we have completed our first week! Here is how our first week went down…
Several Weeks ago I ordered a book online called Toilet Training in a Day by Nathan Azrin. It is an old school book that my mother-in-law swore by…I'm talking 1987 copyright date! I got it off of Amazon for a whopping $4.00. While I was on there I also bought a Melissa & Doug doll named Annie that drank water and would pee.
The whole premise of the book is to basically model how to pee on the big girl potty with Annie 4-5 times. Once they have seen it enough spend the next few hours shoving juice and drinks down their throat. Give them salty snacks to make them thirsty and keep giving them drinks. Once you have that started, ask every 5 minutes if they are wet or dry. They should have learned the difference on Annie with the practice trials. Every 15 minutes put them on the potty to pee. As soon as you see something come out, jump for joy, shout, dance, do whatever is necessary to praise your child and make them feel awesome! Then give them a candy treat and keep on going! This should go on for about 3-4 hours and then they should be pretty much trained. Here is how it worked for us!
Last week, I went to the grocery store and stocked up on fruit punch, fanta, chips, chex mix, cheetos, gummy worms, mini oreos, and snickers. We were ready to rock come Monday.
We had swim lessons that day and then headed home and went straight to the bathroom. I told Delainey I had a present for her since she was such a big girl now. It was a new doll named Annie and some big girl panties. We put the panties on and then opened the doll to see how it worked. We discussed wet vs. dry felt Annie and Delainey's panties and did 2 practice runs. She loved seeing the doll pee! (side note: Hold her over the toilet when she drinks her bottle b/c it comes out instantly). After 2 run throughs I thought we got the point so I started giving her snacks and asking wet or dry every 5 minutes. At 15 minutes on the dot, she sat on the potty and peed! She was so proud of herself. We did this for 1 hour and 30 minutes and she peed 6 times. By that point, I figured she got the hang of it and we stopped. (3-4 hours of that seemed way too long to me. I was done after an hour and a half.)
The rest of the day I followed her around and set my phone alarm to go off every 15-30 minutes to sit on the potty depending on if she had just drank or ate anything. She did really great! I could tell she was a little annoyed at me constantly asking her "is your gina (short for vagina) wet or dry?" but it seemed to work. We did have one accident that evening while playing hide and seek at Grammy's but that was most likely attributed to playing and not wanting to stop to go pee which is learned over time.
The next day she did great, conveniently with only one accident again at Grammy's playing hide and seek. Needless to say we are on a hide and seek ban until we have mastered potty training. No accidents on Wednesday! Which I am so proud of her for because she drinks half the pool at swim lessons so it is great that she is able to let us know if she feels like she has to pee or poop. She did say she had to poop on the way home from the beach on Wednesday. We sang songs about holding it until we got to the potty and she was able to. Took some coaxing but she pooped in the potty about 5 minutes after being home. Thursday we had one accident about 5 minutes after nap and I think that was my fault for not making her go right away…which I have now learned you must go immediately after nap time! It was only a little bit though and then when I put her on the potty to show her where it was supposed to be, a good bit more came out so I think she was trying to hold it in. Friday, she told me 2 separate times she had to pee while in the car so we pulled over into a parking lot and dropped trou, and sure enough she peed right there on the concrete squatting down! We did have an accident while playing at the mall, but I was so flustered that day I couldn't keep up with when to ask her. (that story is for another post)
Saturday we ran some errands, peed on the side of the road twice and then finally went to buy buy baby to buy a portable potty for her to sit on instead of squatting on the concrete. We had a little poop accident before nap time, but that is my hardest thing I'm trying to figure out. She is like clockwork with her BM's. She poops either right before or after nap so I'm trying to find a way to get her to go before nap so I don't have to worry about it. She did great today at church in her big girl panties and even told me she had to pee twice while at the pool.
Overall I would say she is doing fantastic! Of course I have nothing to compare it to since she is my first but I'm proud of her for having no more than one accident a day in the first week. And each accident has been a different circumstance that we are learning from. Pros: It is heaven not having to change diapers and definitely saves you money by not using them anymore. (We are still in pull ups at night. The book says until they are at least 2 1/2 they don't usually have the bladder control to go 12 hours a night.) Cons: It's a lot of work for the mom. It requires you to build in an extra 15 minutes to all activities to allow time to try and pee before we leave the house or when we get somewhere or pull the car over so it doesn't happen in the car seat. The first 2 days are exhausting but trust me it gets much better as time progresses! I know all this work will be worth it in a few weeks when I don't even have to ask her if she's wet or dry and she will let me know when she has to go! Moral of the story, I highly recommend the teaching plan in the book I read and it may be that Delainey was just ready but it seemed very simple and easy to grasp on to for a 25 month old girl!
