Funny Story
I opened my machine washing machine yesterday to find a load of darks full of strange white stuff. Then I discovered something that looked like part of a pad, and then it dawned on me...I had washed a pull-up! My son (who was responsible) said, "Ohhhhh...my jeans are snowed".
Maybe calling them "nighttime underwear" has its downside! As I facebooked the incident, it was comforting to know others had
experienced the same plight and could give some helpful hints. (like shaking the clothes out, washing again once or twice, and sweeping up the floor after the little gel things have dried up a bit).
Disclaimer
I just want to say that every child and every parent is different, so what I have experienced won't suit everyone. I am not an expert...the more children I have had, the more I realize that. My friend with eight children didn't toilet train any of them differently until #7 and #8. And each of my children has gone through toilet-training in a different way, although I have used the same basic method to teach them. So I am going to share what I have learned. I believe there are valuable components that anyone can apply. And it is my opinion that what one finds in magazines is often very nebulous.
Background
In my parenting, I am typically not a methods person. But when it came to toilet-training, I knew I was not structured enough to do the "put them on the toilet every hour" thing. And I didn't want toilet-training to drag on over a long period of time, because I thought me and my kids would both go crazy (and dealing with a lot of messes was not my idea of fun)! So I couldn't just be really relaxed and go with the flow. And I knew I had the potential to waffle, so if it wasn't going well, I would likely revert to diapers or something, and I didn't want to confuse my kids. So, when I was first introduced to my friend-with-the-eight-kids' book "Toilet-Training in Less Than A Day" (which has been "revised" but is still admittedly archaic), I thought it was a good fit for me. And it has been.
The Method
Basically, you spend four to six hours typically with your child in an intensive training session that involves first teaching a doll the basic steps, and then learning them. The basic steps are: pulling down your pants, sitting down, peeing, standing up, pulling up the pants, and dumping, flushing and returning the pot to the potty. And if you wet your pants, you have to practice: ten (less) times running quickly from different places in the house to the potty, pulling down your pants, sitting down, standing up, pulling pants up.
The atmosphere is full of praise, first for everything as it is being done, then gradually lessened to at the completion of different steps and finally only for keeping pants dry. Treats and drinks of favorite beverages are given to encourage maximum opportunity for learning. A list of "friends who care" is used at different times to say who will be proud of them or who keeps their pants dry or who doesn't wet their pants or like wet pants. Verbal rehearsal is used to talk about where we go potty and what we do. But the biggest thing about this method is the focus on dry pants rather than on going on the potty. We reward dry pants, not using the potty, so there are dry pants checks very often during the initial learning and eventually at different intervals throughout the day until it is ingrained.
The goal of the training time is to move from telling your child to go to the potty, to asking them where they go potty, to making a general statement about the potty (it's getting late, I may have mixed that up), to having your child sit down on the potty and pee of his own accord. Once your child has gone to sit on the potty after the first kind of prompt, you move to the next until they've gone on their own. After that, you do dry pants checks every fifteen minutes, and start moving on with the day, having the potty close, and staying fairly close. If accidents happen, for the first week, you have them clean it up (for pee), get them to take their wet stuff off and move it to a designated place, and practice. After the first week, you skip the practice.
My Experience
With my first, a boy, I waited until he was three. At two, he seemed to just be peeing all the time still, and then I had another baby, and I wasn't ready until quite a bit later. He still seemed to be having accidents constantly on training day and I got quite exasperated and went to hang out with my baby for awhile and his breakthrough came with his dad. But he had maybe three or four accidents total in that first week and then never again until school. Kept him in pullups at night (he didn't nap) for the first year. That's it.
With my second, a girl, I did it at age two. She was ready. She was the opposite and held it for the first four hours and so I was exasperated for different reasons. After filling the whole potty pot, and having a few messes, she got it, although it was the next day. She woke up to go pee in the night right away. She went through a time (particularly after #3 came) where she would hold it too long, make it as far as the bathroom, and then have an accident, but it was easy to clean up. A year later, she went through a long period of bed-wetting...she no longer woke up to go, but we found that her dad's warm socks helped that a lot.
With my third, a boy (who I trained two weeks ago), I did it at just over 2.5 years. He was quickest to catch on, within the first hour. (I think I was able to let go of the exact method and adapt it to him a bit more, and God was gracious as I had very little sleep the night before). The exasperation came when he went through a number of accidents following that (one I was on the phone, one I was downstairs etc.) and then started the next morning with several accidents. Since training, he's had a couple of poopy pants, and several puddles (one outside, one in the basement, one when he was really tired), but then he shows us that he knows what to do the next time. He still likes to say "Go potty" and get me to say "okay" if I'm around, but he's got that long groove of diapers pretty much replaced with using the potty. And today, he used the big toilet at the park and started using it at home. Yippee, I'm always glad when they ditch the potty (mine have used it for about two weeks typically).
The Equipment
The requirement for this method, is a potty with an easily-removable pot. I like the First Years one. Mine is yellow on top, blue on the bottom, with a red pot and handles. Bottom turns into a step stool. I got it for $30 at Zellers (but this was four years ago). I also bought a toilet seat which my eldest used for #2 for a year or two, but my daughter had no use for. We'll see if I bring it out for my youngest. It, too, is a First Years product. I love that company.
Conclusion
The only other thing you need is a day without distractions or other children/adults around and some gumption. It takes courage to embark on the intensity of the training as well as some preparation in learning the method. But once the day is done, your child will have the connection in their head, and after having a few accidents...kind of testing things out (and having to clean up and practice), they will have it down. No months and months of remembering to get them to the bathroom or having accidents, or trying to give enough treats or toys, or keep up with a sticker chart. They have had the time to replace that old way of doing things with a new one. And when accidents happen, there's a very clear consequence that naturally discourages them. That's been my experience anyway.
There are other ways of intensive training as well. I think this is the most comprehensive. If anyone has had success with other methods, feel free to comment. I have no experience with any other method unfortunately and this is the only one I can share.
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