Prepare yourself for a discussion about excrement.

Grundi
6 Comments »

In the two short years of parenting I've got under my belt, I'm pretty sure potty training is the absolute hardest thing I've ever done. We're making small strides here at the Grundi household. But it's tough. I'm realizing I'm a control freak. I do not like feeling out of control of poop and pee.

To the uninitiated: when potty training, you let your kid run with just underroos or spankin-naked through the house. This is best done outside where it's okay to poop on the ground. But alas, it's fall and I don't have that luxury. So Lucy pees all over the house. I've learned that when she pees on the floor, she gets upset and then holds the rest in. So a little pee goes on the floor. Then about 10 minutes later, she does it again. And maybe one more time, 10 minutes after that.

So that's a grand total of three pairs of socks, three underpants, three pants and sometimes three shirts, depending on how long it is. Plus some wiping, crying and puddles tracked all around.

The toughest thing is the poop. I know I shouldn't do this, but when she poops in her underpants, I'm totally stunned. I don't know what to do. So I just throw the whole thing away. Underpants and all. I realize they could be salvaged, but I just have no idea how to clean them out good enough to even consider putting them in the machine. So they go right into the can.

By the end of the day, Lucy's pretty frustrated when she makes a mistake and will sometimes cry. Then we go back to diapers because I don't want her to start feeling down about it. And also, for my sake. After a full day of peeing on the floor, I'm tired of worrying about it.

There's been some major successes though. This morning she peed two times in a row in the potty. Then she peed on the floor. Twice. So it goes with potty training.

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6 comments:

Kim said...

Hi Kathy. You might not want a suggestion, but if you do, read on. We didn't potty train Ian until a month before he turned 3, but what we did was to set an alarm clock for every 20 minutes. When the buzzer went off, to the bathroom he went. Doing this allowed me to not get side-tracked (forgetting about time) and allowed him some "matureness" about hearing the alarm and knowing what he needed to do. Whether he had to go to the bathroom or not, into the bathroom to go through the process was done every 20 minutes.

So, for whatever it's worth, I thought I'd share. :) And, the timer I purchased was from the Dollar Store, so we could even take it outside with us (since we were doing this in the beginning of the summer). :)

Good luck! :)

6:40 PM
ninjanna said...

My aunt potty trained one of her daughters in one day. She literally locked her and her daughter in the bathroom for a whole day and they hung out, read books, listened to tapes and when she had to go to the bathroom she went. My aunt said never again would she do that, she was going absolutely crazy. But it worked.

10:49 PM
Grundi said...

Thanks for the tips! I can use them. Lucy she seems to understand, but consistency just isn't there. Part of it might be her age. She's just barely 2, so I might be expecting too much from her.

5:33 AM
genny said...

I know that suggestions are going to come from all over the place, so feel free to ignore the following.

Addie was potty trained really early right around a year, and Ethan was before he was two. I don't really buy the whole age thing (and have seen where older kids are harder). Don't get me wrong, we had accidents. Believe me. But I think a lot of it is just getting into a routine.

I didn't use the alarm clock, but that sounds like a really good idea. Both of my kids were at daycare during the day, and were required to wear pull-ups while there, but they did a good job of the reward system (we used stickers) if they didn't get wet. At home we had big girl/boy underwear, and they got stickers for not being wet. It just took a lot of making sure they got there every 20-30 minutes whether they had to go or not. We also got a potty seat for the big potty instead of having the kids use a potty chair. They really liked being "big kids" and sitting on the big potty.

The actual training took about three days, so it was relatively painless. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

9:18 AM
Brianna Colleen Millett said...

sister, i just love the fact that you throw the entire pair of undies away! i laughed out loud when i read that! why? because i would probably do the same thing!

12:56 AM
Ninjanna said...

I was just thinking about my little sister after reading this again. It only took her two accidents to figure out that she didn't like the feeling of being dirty. Girls are like that. My mom also didn't have a potty chair for her, there was this seat thing that was smaller and wedged itself into our toilet seat so that she could safely sit on the "grown up potty" without falling in. It was pink and had tweety bird on it. She loved it.

Hope it's going well!

7:36 PM

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