Friday, August 2, 2013

Play: The Potty Training Pitfall

We are 12 days into the introduction of panties. For the last 3 days, we have had the number of accidents each day in the single digits. This represents progress. Slowly, but surely. I took her out two days ago to aerobics and yesterday to the park and store in panties and she was accident-free both times. Woohoo! Then today, she had 2 accidents at aerobics but then was accident-free at the store and while eating out at Mad Italian.

I have been diligently timing her pees and poops so that if a suspiciously long interval passes, I know that I need to watch her extra closely to avoid an accident. Or, more likely, wisk her onto the toilet mid-accident. Sometimes she stops mid-pee while i carry her to the potty and then pees the rest there. This means that she is definitely developing those "hold it" muscles, so I feel more confident that she is developmentally capable of being trained.

The biggest issue is getting her to stop playing to go to the bathroom. If we can catch her when she just begins to be interested in a toy or activity, it's easier to motivate her by saying, "First, we'll go potty. Then we'll watch Curious George/color/play outside/eat a snack/throw stuff at the wall/scream into the vaccuum attachment/remove all of the shoes in the shoe bin, etc." But when she's into a toy and it's been 45 minutes since her last potty visit and she starts grabbing at her undies, there is almost no chance of success. If I leave her to play, she will not stop voluntarily except to play with the new puddle of pee that will soon appear on the carpet. If I try to take her away from the toy, she will throw a huge fit, refuse to sit on the potty anyway, and probably pee while writhing in my arms to get back. So we've come up with 2 simple solutions:

1: Take the toy to the potty


 2: Take the potty to the toy


50% of  carpet incidents so far have occurred in front of this kitchen set

Potty training has been pretty consuming, so the other cool things we've done lately seem like another life!

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