Our big boy is using the potty (mostly)

We're on Day 6 of underpants, having abandoned diapers cold-turkey on Feb. 11. Soren is such a BIG BOY. Aren't you proud of him?

Day 1 was impressively accident-free, then we had to wait until Day 5 (yesterday) to achieve all-day dry again. If this trend holds, I guess we can say Soren was potty-trained by age 2-1/2!

OK, so how did it happen? Well, the background is that we've been experimenting with "diaper-free" techniques from the time Soren was nine months old (we should've started earlier, but didn't learn about them until then). So he's been peeing sporadically on his Baby Bjorn potty chair since then (see photo from Summer '09). The concept of the toilet is quite familiar to him, and both Jeff and I have demonstrated and talked openly about its use.

Both of the last summers he ran naked a good deal of the time, eliminating mostly in the great outdoors and occasionally indoors on the floor. I was keen to potty-train him last summer, especially as his best friend (a girl) made the leap around two years of age, but I didn't have a strong training script to follow and I guess Soren just wasn't ready. He often resisted our suggestions. We also were not bold enough to forgo the diapers. So we stopped pushing it but kept the potty chair in full view.

I saw new signs of readiness in Soren in December, but plans to potty-train were waylaid by him suffering a low-level cold all month as well as the looming holidays. The New Year turned and I was more focused on planning my first night away from Soren (see previous post) than I was potty-training him. Yet I'd stationed his favorite potty chair in our main floor bathroom and had done some library reading on the subject over the holidays. I decided to order my own copy of the book Toilet Training In Less Than A Day.

This method was first published in 1976 -- the year I was born -- so it has stood the test of time, and its no-nonsense behavioral psychology resonated with me. I also liked that it makes potty-training a fun challenge for the child (and a rewarding one, literally, with lots of treat options). It recommended training before age 2-1/2 for maximum effectiveness, so I felt some time pressure since that happens on Feb. 27. I found a date on my calendar -- Feb. 11 -- that fell after two upcoming weekend trips and preceded a free weekend at home, and wrote across it, "Potty Training Day."

The book came in the mail and I left it on our dining room table, where Soren soon found it and began looking at the illustrations. This was not part of my plan, but he studiously examined the pictures of the child figure following the steps to potty himself self-sufficiently, including pulling down pants, emptying the pot into the toilet, replacing it in the potty chair, and flushing.

Then GUESS WHAT?? A couple of days later, in a diaper-free moment (we were still giving him lots of those), Soren hopped off his seat at the dining table, said, "I have to go to the bathroom," ran to the potty chair in the bathroom, sat, and peed right away. Before I could offer to lend a hand, Soren was on his feet, had the removable potty chair pot in his hand, lifted the toilet lid and seat together, dumped the pee, replaced the pot on the chair, closed the lid, and climbed up to flush. I was stunned. I only had to remind him to wash his hands.

I have to give some credit for Soren's new interest in the potty to the Love & Logic parenting class I'd started that same week (it's an eight-week course that is still ongoing). Without going into details, the Love & Logic approach involves sharing control with the child through small choices, and I started implementing this right away (see examples of how to do this). I could see that Soren immediately felt more empowered in his daily life, and I think he freely CHOSE to use the potty once he no longer felt it was a task we imposed on him.

Interestingly, for the next two-and-a-half weeks, Soren continued to pee in his potty when he was bare-bottomed, but consistently peed in his clothing every time we experimented with no diaper under his pants. So we waited until we'd returned from our planned trips to do the big training that revolved around giving up diapers forever (we started giving premonitions of this a week prior). On that day -- last Friday -- we shared with Soren the exciting news that he would no longer be wearing diapers, sent Jeff off to work, and started our hard work around 9:30 a.m. This included making and eating lots of popsicles and drinking lots of fluids so that Soren would have the urge to pee. Here he is in his Thomas the Train underwear, enjoying one of those popsicles and looking so big-boyish!
Training Soren's doll "Baby" (as he has always called it) came first in the Less Than A Day technique. Before asking Soren to sit on the potty, I asked him to show Baby how to use it. So both Soren and Baby donned underwear (I'd made Baby a pair from a cut-up sock toe) and had something to drink. Then Soren pulled down Baby's underpants and set his doll on a little toy potty. Here's where I got creative: the book suggests a wetting doll that you can "feed" water and then squeeze to "pee," but gosh darn if I couldn't lay my hands on one. I asked everyone I knew, to no avail, and I wasn't going to buy one. So we pretended to give Baby sips from a cup of water, and then when Soren was momentarily distracted, I used an eyedropper to drip some water dyed with yellow food coloring into Baby's potty.

"Check and see if Baby's peed," I casually suggested to Soren. He looked at me a little funny, but obediently lifted up his doll and did a double-take. I nearly laughed out loud when he then turned Baby over and stared hard at his soft-bodied crotch, like, "Where did THAT come from?" I DID laugh when he followed this with, "Baby's pee is green!" That's what you get with yellow liquid in a turquoise blue potty!

Both Baby and Soren got edible treats (kept handy in my pocket) for this pottying success, and Soren seemed to be enjoying this little game. We redressed Baby and showed him how to feel between his legs and report that his pants were dry when we asked. Again, when Soren's back was turned, I spilled a little water on Baby's underwear. When Soren conducted the next "dry pants inspection," he reported (again, with a sense of wonder) that they were wet. Glory be! We then showed Baby what to do when he'd had an accident. We used the language of "wet pants are bad, Baby," and "wet pants are no fun," and "big boys have dry pants." Then we ran Baby through a Positive Practice drill, where he had to hurry through several practice potty runs from different spots in the house, including where he'd had the accident. "Go fast, Baby wet his pants, Baby has to practice..." Only then did we change Baby's wet underpants and put on a dry pair. (Soren is supposed to follow this same routine when he has an accident, except he has to remove the wet underpants himself and dress himself in dry ones, plus help clean up any mess.)

After that, Baby successfully peed on the potty one more time before we pronounced him trained. Baby was now a Big Boy, Soren agreed. And here are my two Big Boys, pictured below:
By this time, Soren's little bladder was filling up, and the first time I suggested he try sitting on the potty, he peed as if on cue. We went through the motions of emptying the pot, etc., then had more fun together eating treats and drinking juice, with him wearing just underpants the whole time. He then took the initiative to pee on his own (which I was elated at), then we had the perfect learning opportunity of a poop coming. Soren was playing with his train set in the living room, when he stood up and I saw the funniest contorted look on his face. "Run fast," I urged, and he made it to the potty in time to pull down his underpants and eliminate. He has rarely pooped on the potty in the past, so this was also a big step forward.

We tried to lie down for a nap, but Soren was too wired to sleep. He pottied himself again soon after getting up, then a couple of more times before the day was done. He managed to keep the same pair of underpants DRY all day, which was impressive. Maybe it was the promised reward of a caboose for his new model train (which I'd been keeping in reserve)! Here's the battery-powered and immensely popular train without the caboose:
But it was Soren's Day 1 success that lulled me into making a big mistake on Day 2 -- we went on an outing. And not just around town, but an hour-long car ride away, carpooling with a friend. So where did he have his first accident? In a public place away from his potty. We couldn't very well do Positive Practice runs to the public restroom. I kick myself for being so confident of his abilities to not foresee this. Yes, we carried a potty with us in the trunk of the car, and we even stopped on the way down and set it on the side of the road because Soren said he had to pee, but unsurprisingly he was unable to relax in the cold wind. He didn't want to pee in the public restrooms once we'd arrived at our destination (although he had done that before, so I didn't think it would be a sticking point). Then he peed twice in his carseat on the ride home. Ug.

Day 3 we stayed at home and practiced, needless to say. So we're on our way after a smooth then bumpy start.

It's not soon enough for me. I am heartily sick of diapers, and the longer Soren has resisted pottying, the more mortified I have felt about all the solid waste we were generating. We dabbled in cloth diapers but the routines never stuck, so we've been using disposables all this time. Now, in addition to the money we'll save not buying diapers, we can cut our garbage pick-up service back to once every two weeks.

So from now on it's underwear (except at night for the time being, because he never wakes up dry and he's still in a crib he can't climb out of without help). Next time you see Soren, be sure to tell him how proud you are that he's wearing Big Boy Underwear!