Potty Learning

I cannot believe that I am already here. I hadn't really thought about potty learning Daniel for a while yet but a mama friend posed the question to our playgroup recently, "Who was going to potty learn this summer?" I thought, "Not me!" I was sure this was going to be a difficult power struggle with Daniel who has always seemed a little clueless about being in a messy diaper (at least since the beginnings of the moblie days). Especially as I missed the window of opportunity at the newborn stage when a child is resistant to messing on himself. (Oh well, next time, right?)

On to our present journey: I decided that if my grandmothers and great-grandmothers could have their kids out of diapers early, why couldn't I? I've never understood the fear of damaging a child through early potty training (which I've heard as an argument against it). I do understand the idea that pushing a child and creating a negative experience surrounding toileting can be detrimental but that is true no matter what age one begins. There is no eveidence to suggest anything remotely detrimental to a child's health and well-being by being introduced to the potty early. And, I'm REALLY sick of washing diapers. So, today we took the diapers off and bought a potty chair. My first goal was to re-teach Daniel to recognize when he was eliminating. So, when he would pee, I would say, "Look, you are peeing. pssss." Nothing remarkable. Pretty soon, he would look down at himself while he was peeing, like, "wow!"

So, as the day progressed, I made sure he never sat in a wet diaper and every so often we would go and sit on the potty chair and talk about going potty. Well, I fully expected to have days like today for weeks on end before Daniel bagan to recognise that he was peeing much less to learn to recognize that he had to pee before he needed to. But... during dinner he was talking to us and suddenly said, "pee pee" (which he learned today). I said, "OK, let's go to the potty" and we got down from the table and sat on the potty. I asked, "can you go pee? psss." AND HE WENT!!!! I couldn't believe it! I am so proud of my baby boy and he is so proud of himself. We caught a pee on our first day out!

So, we'll see where this takes us, but I am very hopeful that we can start wearing training pants predominately. I think what we will do for now is to use just trainers or an uncovered diaper and leg warmers or nothing for now with regularly scheduled trips to the potty (after waking up in the morning, before and after eating, before and after naps, etc). And we'll just see where this leads us! I'm so pleased to find that this thing I was dreading so much will be an adventure!