“No More Diapers!” – Potty Train in 7 Days
Soon after my last post on potty training we visited our chiropractor. We had been trying to work on it, not quite full-time 100%, but I had been putting in good effort for more than a few weeks, and honestly, it was exhausting. We weren’t seeing things trend in the direction we wanted… it was getting like he cared less and less about using his potty. I was about burnt out. And Dr. Chris listened and nodded, and said, “He’s right at turning two? And especially with a boy…” and just kind of smiled. “And you’re exhausted from trying?” How did he know??!
What he then said, was that there are some great windows of opportunity or stages in development that are the best – easiest and most successful – times to potty train. At 18 months or 2.5 yrs., but not so much in between. Well. That was obvious. This chiropractor has been right about a few things before (greatly decreased morning sickness, helped my shoulders, why my neck hurts after I sleep, etc.), so being near desperation, I thought, Maybe there’s something to this, so we pretty much stopped working on potty training mid-summer. He turned two in July. We had a few trips coming up, and travel was so much easier with him still in diapers. It worked out well. But come January… he would be 2 and a half…
It is now January. But we had the flu and then colds, and still had our annual Christmas/New Year’s card and letters to send, so I was going to wait until we were better and a little more caught up on life. After all, this was going to require a few intense weeks of staying home all the time to get it down.
A few different days a month before, I had even tried the let-them-go-naked method, to kind of get a feel for where he was at and, if worse came to worse, that might be what it would take and I could probably handle a couple days of it if I could be guaranteed it would work that fast (it did seem to work better). But if you read my other post, you know that is just not our style. 😛
On what was the worst day of my cold, he suddenly remembered there were underwear in his drawer. And he wanted to wear them. Though I didn’t feel like working with it, it was kind of convenient, because he had exactly 4 diapers left before we were out (and we don’t get to the store that often). It was Monday and he did well wearing underwear for large parts of the day. Tuesday he woke up and instantly insisted that he wear underwear. “NO diaper!” to be exact. The train had left the station, and I was running to catch up. It was his idea, all right. He liked wearing underwear… and nothing else. (At least not the other way around! :D) We kept the house a bit warmer, gave an overabundance of praise, told him good thing he was a big boy now because we don’t have any more of his diapers, and my entire day was reminders and passing out treats. So it went like this:
Day 1 – Wants to wear underwear for parts of the day
Day 2 – Wants to wear underwear ALL the time; no more diapers. On his own experimented with standing to pee (hadn’t been interested before). Let him try underwear overnight…
Day 3 – …with disastrous results. A little too soon. 🙂 I didn’t sleep good cause I was on alert all night to rush him to the bathroom right away if he woke up, and despite that had two accidents. Plastic/waterproof coverings to protect the mattress and a towel instead of a sheet made an extra load of laundry, but relatively easy clean up. Did good during the day, definitely getting the hang of it! Sometimes he wears pants over the underwear. (A little less successful because sometimes he forgets.) Dry for nap. Proud mama!
Day 4 – Stayed home from Mom’s Group to keep working on it! The main difference this time is that he is initiating having to use the bathroom, many times without me reminding him. When he gets busy playing or distracted he’s a little more likely to forget. Only 2 accidents all day. Dry for nap AGAIN! What we found works for night time is a diaper under the underwear… He still is wearing underwear that he needs to keep dry, and I sleep better!
Day 5 – Dry all day! Even with a friend over to play.
Day 6 – Dry all day! More company over for half the day… We reminded him, but still, he did great. Wore pants over the underwear too. HUGE resistance to wearing a “just in case” diaper at night… He was devastated with it (again). It meant so much to him, and it’s a good idea to be consistent, so we let him just wear underwear. So far, so good.
Day 7 – Our first outing in underwear! {Oh the nerves for the Momma!} Used the small potty at church; did great in the truck. Spent the afternoon babysat at Grandpa and Grandma’s house, and did great with them. (Took his potty chair over there.) Only one partial #2 accident.
Days 8 & 9 – Dry and clean 24/7 except for one small wetting when I didn’t get him to the potty right away after waking. When at home he is 90% responsible for remembering when to go and just uses the potty when he needs to! This is SO nice!!! When he thinks of it and wants one, we still do treats. Those will be phasing out soon.
He LOVES the independence this gives him! I think he feels more respected and proud of himself too. It’s very important to him that we trust him – as we learned with not having him wear ANY diapers, not even for night or car rides.
5 Reasons I’m Thankful he Trained Now:
- He is more verbal: Wakes up and hollers, “Mom, I need go potty!” “Can’t go” “not yet” “poop” “pee” “big potty” etc. are also in his vocabulary. 6 months ago he only could sign and say “potty.”
- He can take his pants and underwear up and down by himself. Didn’t have the coordination for it yet before this.
- Had a strong, unstoppable desire to wear underwear and use the potty. The whole, “when they’re ready,” has some truth to it!
- Feels bad when he has an accident. Immediately says, “I get new underwear.” and runs upstairs to do so to ‘fix it.’ Other times he’s been adorable and come up to me after being all cleaned up and said (very sadly as he hugged me), “Sorry, Mom, poop in underwear.”
- It is a great outlet for his independent ‘by myself’ spirit that is coming out more and more at this age. He can take responsibility for going to the bathroom himself!
**I’m interested to see if kid 2 hits some of these stages at 18 mo. and we could work on it then (when kid 1 was 18 mo. I had a newborn).
Well, I’ve waited to post this until we could claim ‘He’s potty-trained!!!’ I’d say multiple consecutive days dry, nights and naps all successfully in underwear, and only a couple of accidents or less per week, is the definition of trained!
I’m expecting every kid to be different, but I hope this at least gave you a real-life picture of one way that potty-training can go! (In this case, roughly 6 weeks of working on it at age 2 to no avail; 1 week from diapers to fully trained at age 2.5)
Best tip: When the kid shows interest, GO FOR IT RIGHT THEN!
Biggest challenge: He doesn’t like it when we suggest or tell him to go potty, and throws a fit (working on that). Learning creative ways to get him to try such as, “After you go pee, we’ll read these books, ok?” has been a lot more effective.
I’m so thankful that God gave me the grace to make it through 2 weeks of potty-training at the same time as being sick! It was also kind of a blessing in disguise because I was planning to have to miss a lot of things for the weeks I would stay home while we worked on it, but we already were home because of being sick. And one of my new year’s goals? Check! 😀
We’re just about due for a visit to the chiropractor… Speaking of which, he is two weeks from being 2 and a half. Go figure.
