Potty Training #3

Ok, I promised my next post would be about potty training, so here it is. I have had the hardest time with my 3rd child, who happens to be a boy. The girls weren't that easy either, but I had begun to think that my youngest would never learn. He's already 3 years and 8 months, after all, and we're just now making some headway.

I started working with him over a year ago, but he definitely did not seem ready. He very obviously had no clue about what was happening when he had an accident. He had no bodily control at all, and I think it scared him. We would try for a day or so, and then I'd give up, since he so obviously wasn't ready. Maybe he would have gotten the hang of it earlier if I had been more persistent, but I didn't see any hope of progress being made at that time, not without a lot of one-on-one attention from me (like all-day attention), and I just didn't want to spend that much time on it at the expense of teaching my oldest, doing preschool with my middle, fixing meals, washing the dishes, sleeping, etc. It just wasn't going to happen, if I was to keep my sanity, and I didn't see any real reason to traumatize him.

So we waited. I tried again every now and then, without much sign of progress. It was kind of nice for a while, since whenever I took off his diaper, he would lay down on the changing pad and not move until I put another diaper on him! Good for when I needed him to calm down for a while and stop running around the house.

But just this past month, he has made a breakthrough. He stopped screaming when I put him on the toilet, he began to show more comprehension of the whole process, and he even was happy (ecstatic) when he successfully used the potty seat. It took quite a while to get him to stop sitting on the potty seat for hours on end, and to realize that he could "hold it" for a while. But it was nice that he really didn't want to make messes on the floor - I had to clean up after my girls a lot more than I am having to with my boy.

To make a long story short, he now wears underwear the entire morning until naptime, and most of the afternoon/evening between naptime and bedtime (as long as we don't go anywhere). He uses the toilet and not the potty seat. He still has accidents if I don't remind him to go (and often physically take him) to the bathroom. He still has a hard time with #2. And he still will only use the one toilet he has "practiced" on. But he is making so much progress! Now I just need to train him to put his clothes back on afterwards, and convince him that he can use different toilets. My middle child just recently learned how to last the entire night without a diaper, so we are rapidly approaching the diaper-free zone. I am so looking forward to no more diapers!