Potty Training Chronicles - II

In case you're wondering... potty training is closed for now.


After my last post about Sydney pushing the issue - asking to go, putting herself on the potty, refusing to wear a diaper - we spent a weekend in potty training boot camp.  She did pretty well from the standpoint that she had very few accidents... but that's not because she was using the potty.  She sat on it plenty.  But with no result.  She has some amazing bladder control!  But when she starts asking for a diaper, you know she really has to go.  I refused to put a diaper on her.  Determined that she was either going to get the concept or we would wear her down and she would lose interest herself for a while.


I had to hold her, crying, on the potty.  When she finally went, she would get so excited, clap and whoop.  But then we'd go through the same thing all over again.


There were lots of incentives.  We tried candy.  Toys.  Stickers.  She enjoyed them all when she went, but it wasn't enough to get her to go again.


I tried tricks to get her to sit on the potty longer than a few seconds.  We had to count to 10.  She did that with great enthusiasm - sit, count to 10 (or her version is more like six, eight, nine, ten!), stand up, pull up her panties and yell "I DID IT!" - about 150 times in a row.  Sigh.  One of those many times as a parent you begin regretting your own clever tricks.


It seems like she has anxiety about going in the potty - she knows when she needs to go.  But she'd much rather put that diaper on, do her business and then take it right back off.


So that Sunday afternoon, we called it quits.  I figured if I had to hold her crying on the potty, something wasn't working.  She wasn't ready.  To help stop her own potty infatuation, I hid all potty seats and stools.  Now that she can't take herself, she seems to have let it go for a while.  Thank goodness!  


Although cute, I think we've seen enough of her bare bottom running around here for a while.


This weekend we weaned Fletcher off the bottle.  We're into big life projects around here.