We started potty training Nelly Thursday (the 21st) and it has been an experience to say anything. I have gone from feeling this potty training is going good to "what in the world am I thinking, trying to do this with a 2 month old, geeze." But yes she is making progress. My attitude at the beginning has changed. I was trying to do it really hard core, get it over with and in a week tops we will have it down pack. Ya that didn't happen. As time went on I became more loose about how we approached it.
Basically I have been doing "potty training orientation" for about 6 months. When she hit 2 years old, I realized that she had no signs that she was ready to start potty training and was scared even to sit on the potty. So she started getting chocolates to just sit on the potty. It actually took a while but she started being more and more okay with it. She also started becoming more and more aware the more we talked about it. A couple of weeks before we potty trained we talked about it and talked about it. I told her if she went potty like a big girl she would get princess underwear. Let I remind you up until this point I have not caught a single pee-pee or poo-poo in the potty. Despite trying all...the....time.
When the day finally came I just put her straight in underwear and kept asking her every 5 minutes if she had to go potty. Occasionally she would say yes and we'd put her on the potty but nothing would happen. So then she would go play and 10 minutes later and she would pee. Thank God she did not like the feeling of peeing outside of her diaper. The second day I tried putting her on the potty because she obviously had to go and she was holding it. I got her to go poo-poo because with her they are pretty easy to see when she needs to go and she doesn't have the strength to hold it as long. But for pee-pee it was a different story. We sat there for about 6 hours as she cried that she had to go potty but would not go. We finally took a break for nap and she woke up with a clean pull-up so again we tried to put her on the potty. She held it ALL DAY LONG. Finally around 5-6 pm we gave up, figured it was a good start, and tried to put her pull-up on her to relax before bedtime. But she was too traumatized or something and would not go. So we gave her a bath that helped her calm down and put her to bed.
Finally on the 3rd day of potty training I was able to get her to pee-pee in the potty. She just wasn't able to hold it all day like she had done before. So with screaming and more screaming she was able to finally loose control and go potty. Whew. I kept waiting for a light bulb to click on and for her to say, "oh that's not so bad. I can do it." But no that didn't happen. This morning was the first morning that we've been able to put her on the potty and she hasn't screamed at the top of her lungs like we are going to kill her. Yes screamed at the top of her lungs like we were going to kill her. *rubs temples*
Right now she has gotten more in the potty then out. I have a record on the right side column of my blog. It's been there since day 2 just to make me feel better. I have all stops out. We are rewarding her with chocolates, stickers, and prizes if she does it several times. So I figure we are making progress. I believe I will be able to successfully potty train her and don't have to quit because it's not working or she's just not ready. It just might take a while, defiantly longer than a week. (What was I thinking?)
Yes we were pretty hard on her at the beginning but I don't know if we would have figured out what the problem was of her holding it unless we tried that. So in retrospect it all worked out. I'll let you know how it's going in a month.
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