I have tried several times to potty train Will. All to no avail. It's flat out not easy. Be prepared for lots of tears, fits, hitting, piss and shit all over your floor. No book is gonna teach you, no blog post is going to give you the magic clue and no friend is going to light your way. Our training is not over but we are officially on the road.
For me it was difficult because we had our second before our first was remotely close to being trained. Having a new baby is hard work. They are demanding and they win the attention. Potty training a child has to be like a newborn babe on the tit, constant. So when you have two demanding things one usually wins out over the other. Potty training took a backseat. We got Will a potty, we got him books, we got him underwear and I bought him a special seat that rests on the big potty. Over the course of a year these were introduced, talked about, mildly used but never firmly grasped. Four days ago I said Fuck It. This is how it's going to be now.
Will is a huge juice drinker. He is an addict. He wakes up and literally asks for juice. He insists on a bottle. This bottle business will be my next battle. So the boy pees. A lot. His disposable diapers hold it but one pee and they are through. I was exhausted changing diapers all day. Plus, they are not cheap. I thought about it. It's cheaper to wash his pee clothes than buy his diapers. Also, I have like 3 seconds to change him when I get the chance and he loves to fight me. He won't lay down, he flails his legs and he rolls all over. No, no, no. Fuck That. You go pee in the toilet. I am done son.
The first day he peed his pants every single time he had to pee. He then sobbed and demanded/pleaded for a diaper. I just told him his diapers no longer fit him. I told him he peed to much for the diaper and they couldn't hold it anymore. That night i put him in his diaper to sleep and he pooped. We changed him and sent him off to sleep. The second day we stayed on him. We asked him every five minutes if he had to pee. He peed his pants a couple times and used to potty a couple times. He threw a huge fit where he hit me repeatedly. Through swats I had to just say to him he wasn't in trouble. I just said I expected this and it was okay. He did go in time out but my words stayed with him. He did not poop that day. The third day he was better and so were we. We started learning his signs for needing to pee. We turned him on to peeing on things like Cheerios in the toilet. In the early afternoon he tricked me. I was busy making him lunch and he asked if he could poop. I of course said yes only to realize that he wasn't going off to poop, he was pooping in his underwear. My realization was too late. I calmly stopped what I was doing and we went to clean him up. He was quite upset but I remained calm and cool. We plopped the turd in the toilet and he loved wiping his butt with TP.
Today was day 4. He would either tell me straight up he had to pee or I would see he had to go and tell him to go try. Every time I say go try he refuses. A few minutes later he would tell me he has to go. Now, mind you, I have to go with him every time. He is too small to operate flawlessly. He has trouble getting the pants down, he has to be reminded to go all the way to the potty with his feet on the stool, sometimes he needs a hand to get up on the stool, he has to be reminded to wipe his wiener, he needs help tearing the TP off, he needs help pulling his pants up and he has trouble getting the handle far enough to flush. Sometimes I have a 10 month old crawling all over us and the toilet while this is going on. Today though he pooped in the potty. He actually did it. He told me he needed to and he did it. It took a lot of asking but he finally caved. Usually he just sits on the potty for an hour if you let him. He is freaked out by pooping in the toilet. When he saw my excitement after we heard that plop he got jazzed. He knew he pleased me and he liked it. He flushed for the first time by using both hands. Call me a freak but I took a picture. He smiled for me. He never does that for pictures anymore. He loved it so much he talked about it several times during the day and told his dad when he got home. Tonight, we put his diaper on. He questions us why he gets put in a diaper then and not the rest of the day. I told him it was because he doesn't pee much at night and we will stop once he learns he needs to pee in the middle of the night and goes by himself. He was playing and I was about to say goodnight to him so I could put his sister down when I saw the face. The pooping face. I should have known. I saw it moments earlier and maybe I could have saved it but again, I was distracted. I asked him if he was pooping. He started to cry. He told me he wanted to poop in his potty. It was so so sweet. I took him crying and his fussy crying exhausted sister to the bathroom. We got him out of his zipped up jammies, pulled of the poopy diaper and had him try to poop some more. He wanted to put the diaper poop in the toilet to flush it. I love that boy.
I would now like to share some secrets and explain that the stars aligned to make this happen. This process did start during the summer. It also started on Saturday morning over a weekend my husband was home. Monday and Tuesday my mom was helping me. I give him grape juice so he has to poop. A super bonus was his girl crush neighbor friend who is 9 months older and trained left a surprise poop in our potty when I was encouraging trying to go potty. She jumped at the chance to potty, explained to Will that she loved his Cars themed toilet seat and unbeknownst to us pooped. Either she didn't flush or it didn't go down but it helped telling Will that his favorite person pooped in his potty. Also, I haven't left the house. Tomorrow I will and I will leave with my purse containing a towel.
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