Taking Care of Business!

A little over a month ago, Keyan started notifying us that he had finished going to the bathroom in his diaper. He would lie down on the ground, lift up his legs, and say, "Diaper change!" We have a friend whose daughter exhibited the same behavior.... until she was four and a half years old. Horrified by that possibility, Jonathan and I decided to potty train.

But we were totally baffled by what approach to take. We researched a bunch of methods and came across one that had actually been part of a scientific study. The results were made into a book by Nathan Azrin & Richard Foxx entitled "Potty Training in Less than a Day." So we read it, followed it, and were quite pleased with the results.

Of course, I know what you're thinking- there's no way it can be done in a day. And that's true. For us, it took four days. One day, four days... it's all good to me!

To sum up the book: you train with a doll, then have your child mimic the training- all the while reinforcing with treats. The authors say you can still put your child in training diapers at night, so we have been putting Keyan in Pull-Ups, but he has woken up dry each morning.

We trained Keyan Thursday, and Friday was the last day he had a pee accident. Poo took a little longer... but when he woke up Monday morning, he went #2 all on his own and has ever since. I'm sure there will be accidents here and there, but if Keyan can stay dry for five hours like he did when we went to Logan last weekend, then I am pretty confident that they will be only occasional.

I recognize that this is not the only way to potty train your kids (many of you have already trained your kids and were successful with other methods)... but this totally worked for us. And I guess that's the point of my post. Different things work for different people. It really bothers me when people try to tell me I'm wrong about something I am trying with my child. In respect to potty training, we have been told things like "You are totally rushing your child. You have to wait until he's ready." (What does ready mean anyway? Don't we all define it differently and know when our child fits the definition we've created?) Another thing we were told was that we were going to make Keyan get a bowel obstruction by forcing potty training on him at such a young age. But we never forced Keyan to potty train (We all know the result of parent-child power struggles- parents never win!) and he did just fine. There is no right or wrong to parenting; we all do it differently. We learn from suggestions, not disparaging remarks.

Okay, I'll step down from my soap box now... and simply say that we are so proud of our little boy and the progress he has made!

I'm probably a boring mom that I didn't get "fun" underwear for Keyan to wear. But $5.74 for three pairs of Lightning McQueen underwear or $3.99 for seven pairs of plain white ones? I'm just too practical!

Sitting on the little potty.

And sometimes on the big potty, too.