Monday, April 19, 2010

Two words: Potty Training

Have I mentioned that my son is totally using the potty?

Aw, yeeeeah!

He started doing it a few weeks ago and yes, I am totally taking credit where it is undue. Let's face it, this accomplishment has little to do with me and much to do with that uberpursuasive "Big Boys Use The Potty" book but so far things have gone surprisingly smoothly. We haven't braved underwear yet - he still gets wet overnight or if he's watching a particularly compelling Sesame Street - but I'd say a good 80% of the time he keeps things dry.

(Okay, I just realized that the biggest thing in my life is tallying up how many times my child has pooped in a plastic chair. This is what it has come to, friends.)

Unfortunately I made the mistake of crowing about Owen's potty prowess in front of another mother who promptly informed me that I was doing it all wrong. Apparently my technique - asking him if he needed to potty, waiting for the inevitable "nope!", leading him to the potty anyway, giving him a book and some privacy - is so last decade. Today's mommies let the child lead. In other words, they let him run around naked and wait until he pees. Or as Other Mother put it, "He'll never learn to go if you keep telling him when to."

Wait, he'll never learn to pee on his own? Ever? He'll be sitting in the dorm room waiting for my call so he knows when to urinate? I call bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I get the theory behind the technique, but I just don't have it in me to spend all day, every day cleaning up puddles of baby pee. (Or worse.) The way I see it, my job is to make the potty a nonthreatening, user-friendly experience. After that, it's just a matter of letting him learn.

Parents, where do you stand on all this? Did anybody go the au natural route? Please say yes. (Can't wait to hear those stories...)

4 comments:

Dan G said...

I wait for my mother's call.

Missy said...

Other Mom is full of shit.

Toilet learning is a unique experience and frankly one where the child has ultimate control. I don't care how many damn times you sit a kid on the toilet,or how many days you let them run around bare-assed they ain't gonna go there until they are damn good and ready.

Your son is using the toilet with no or very little drama? Then you are on the right track.

Other Mommy is probably just pissed because she is spending her days cleaning it up off the floor, and needed to make someone else feel inadequate to soothe herself.

Score one for Ali, Matt, and Owen.

Yay for peeing on the potty.

Sometime I will have to tell you about how I dropped everything and went to Chuck E. Cheese after #1 peed in the toilet. (After she went without peeing At. All. for almost two days. She did not get that iron bladder from me.)

#2 got my own special version of the "You Did It!" song from Dora the Explorer with toilet appropriate lyrics.

Oh the lengths we will go to.

electriclady said...

We did au naturel to begin with, but you still have to catch them in the act and make them sit down on the potty for it--it's not like they will automatically sit down for it when standing is so much more awesome. Also, she got great at using the potty when she was naked, but once we introduced underpants into the equation she got totally confused and it took us another 6 months to really be officially trained.

If your kid is using the potty happily, you're doing it right.

pursuedbyabear said...

I did the run around naked kid route. It worked. He potty trained himself when he was a bitty baby. But we lived in California and were outside most of the time. So if he peed it was in the grass.