At Georgia’s 18 month well baby appointment, her doctor said that we could start introducing the potty since she was so verbal. I went out and bought a cute little green frog potty chair and the training began.
And the training is still going on…..we try for a while and then we stop because we aren’t really getting any where. We tried putting on underwear while we were at home, and I found that I was just cleaning up mess after mess all day long. So then I would go back to putting Georgia in pull ups all day.
I really REALLY wanted Georgia to be potty trained by her 3rd birthday. Not because I’m worried about what people think about having a kid over 3 who’s not potty trained, but because I want to stop buying diapers!!!!! Those things are not cheap. And pull ups are even more expensive.
I decided to wait until after vacation to start more aggressively doing potty training….and by aggressive, I mean with myself, not with her. When she’s wearing a pull up, it’s so easy to forget that she needs to the potty. I knew that I needed to be consistent for her to have success.
So after vacation, I started again with Georgia wearing underwear at home. I cleaned up so many messes it was ridiculous. She knew what to do, but she just didn’t want to do it. And everything that you read is that they will do it when they are ready. Well, that didn’t really cut it for me. I was not willing to wait until she was ready….she might have been in high school before she was ready to pee in the toilet. I’m a no nonsense girl and this was not working for me.
On one of my days off, we were at home so I had Georgia in underwear. I had to shower, so I asked her if she needed to potty. She said no. I took my shower and was getting out and she came into the bathroom with me. I asked her if she needed to go pee pee and she again said no. Not a minute later she peed all over the bathroom floor and my large rug (the kind that is a pain to wash and dry). I was so upset and tired of cleaning up these messes that I told her we were done with pull ups. And if she had an accident that she would be the one cleaning it up, I was not doing it anymore. AND if we went out to the store, a friend’s house, the park, the zoo, wherever, we would have to go home.
Nolan was working from home that day. And I know that he though I was crazy. That this was never going to work. Well, Georgia had 2 more accidents that day and then she was dry, the rest of the day. And every day since then, has been pretty good. She has not had an accident while we were out in public and she is even going potty on her own now, no prompting. She still has accidents, she sometimes forgets when we are at home and she is playing, but she is getting better everyday. It is one less battle that we are constantly fighting.
It’s amazing the pride that I feel that my daughter has learned to poop and pee in the potty. It was a long fight, we were “potty training” for a year, so I’m glad that we are on the home stretch!
hoo man! maybe i need to take a page from your book – we’re still working on this – and have to be done by sept. b/c he’s off to preschool!!