we've been attempting potty training for about 3 and some months now.
it went awesome the first few days, than poorly then well for a month and a bit, then poorly and then very poorly.
what i mean by this is that Isla always did well when we asked her if she had to pee, but probably only told us she had to pee a handful of times.
she also has very rarely pooped on the potty.
this has been a frustrating time, lots of pees all over the place: our house, outside, and at friends's houses.
i found myself starting to be angry with her.
i was rethinking the whole potty thing when the last thing that happened was 2 visits in a row at the same friend's house she first pee'd on the couch and then the next time pee'd all over her friend's room... that was covered in toys. oy vey. (to be fair, the second time i told her not to pee on the couch, i wasn't specific enough...clearly)
i think the main thing was that i almost felt a social pressure to punish, and not that anyone was actually pressuring me... but, you know.
so i took a step back, and then this showed up in my facebook newsfeed.
toilet learning vs. toilet training.
i'm going to go ahead and say that i won't necessarily do all these things, but what stood out to me the most was this checklist
in reading this list i realized that she had not been doing a lot of these things, and in fact still wasn't.
i also needed to check myself, and if my reactions always seemed frustrated and angry, we had to change something.
so here's the thing i think, if she's not ready, she's not ready.
so starting Saturday we put her back in diapers (mostly cloth-yippee!)
and told her that she could use the potty if she wanted to, but she didn't have to.
we had a much more relaxing weekend, with a few trips to the toilet or potty,
and this morning she asked to wear a pull-up and has been pretty much using the potty on her own (go figure).
so we'll see how this week progresses, but i'm happy to not be stressed and very happy to not feel frustrated or about something she can't control.
live and learn.
poor first born trial children ;)
1 comment:
kids are resilient.
You're a great, Mom. We don't have to never make mistakes, we just have to be introspective and open to our own growth.
And pee and poo everywhere IS frustrating! Believe me, I know.
I have a few friends who pushed the potty-training issue when their kids didn't show the signs of readiness, because they were getting comments about their kid's age and stuff from parents and others, and then their kids got pretty anxious about poop issues and had some severe holding-it-in stuff that lasted a few years. Those friends waited a LOT longer with their second-born kids to start the toilet training process and it went much faster because the kids were over 3 years old.
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