Potty Training Round 3

Yep, I'm at it again. Due to B just now really being trained, an article that I read a couple of weeks ago and a book that a friend loaned me, I am working on training O. She is doing surprisingly well. Yesterday was her first real day in undies. She had two full accidents, but still went on the toilet. Then she started figuring out how to control her bladder and would wet a little, then still go on the toilet. I put her in a diaper for dinner so that we could sit there and eat for a while and she just went in her diaper. I don't think I'll do that again. Today we have been going to the bathroom every 10-15 minutes. She has only wet two pairs of undies and neither time was big enough to have any mess other than a change of undies! Woohoo! Progress! She wore the same undies for about three hours before nap time and is sleeping in a cloth pull up now.

With thinking about potty training for the last couple of days, I decided to read the book on loan. It is interesting. I was really hoping it would have some tips towards bowel movement training. I have never heard any great advice towards training a child to have a BM on the toilet. This book was no better than the rest. It offers all sorts of guidelines to train a child on how to pull their pants down, urinate, pull their pants up and clean up, but no tips on how to teach your little girl to wipe or have a bm in the toilet. We will press on.

This book (which I can't think of the name of) has a copyright of 1974. It is really interesting to see how pediatric recommendations have changed since then. There are a couple of things that humored me. One is that they always refer to the child as "he". This doesn't bother me at all. We have done that with each pregnancy that we did not find out the sex of the baby. The Bible refers to everyone in the masculine. It's not a big deal. In present day articles they switch the gender back and forth by paragraph or bullet points. If it is an article on potty training for example, each tip will switch between he/she. Another thing that is interesting about this book is that it encourages giving your child a lot of their favorite drinks to promote the need to go. O has only really had water, milk, apple juice and cranberry juice, should I buy some special juice to encourage the drinking? The final thing that is way different is the insistence on giving them snacks as a reward. A pediatrician would NEVER tell you to bribe a child with food these days! In fact, I have been told the opposite, "Don't use food as an incentive."

With the rate of obesity in our country juice and snacks/candy are not encouraged and often looked down upon. I have tried to limit our juice and candy consumption. O has been given juice to help with her regularity, but the boys only get it on occasion from Daddy. Candy is a truly special and rare treat. Today I decided that I would reward O with a little tiny candy for having dry undies and to encourage the boys to encourage her, they would get a piece as well. The first two times were great. Everyone was excited to get this piece of candy that is smaller than a s.kittle. Later we were getting ready for lunch and the boys confessed that they ate all of the special candy, they were all gone. Yep, that's why I ration it out! They would eat every single piece if I gave them free range. I suppose they don't need the bribery to keep their undies dry any more and they won't be receiving any more special treats for a few days!

Happy toilet training!