toilet training

[metaphortunate]

So toilet training, unsurprisingly, began with me freaking out. See, one of the women who was in my mom's group when the Junebug was born posted to Facebook that her son was finally staying dry through the night, yay! And I freaked out. Because, I mean, I don't demand he be toilet trained just because another kid his age is. That's up to his own personal development. But if another kid is already finished toilet training, then clearly there is a chance that the Junebug's been ready to start; and we hadn't given him that chance. That's on us and I'm pretty unhappy about it.

But neither of us knew anything about toilet training, so I did what I do about everything, which is collect a bunch of books. The ones I have read so far are:

1) 3 Day Potty Training: Start Friday, Done Sunday! by Lora Jensen
2) Potty Training Boys the Easy Way: Helping Your Son Learn Quickly -- Even If He's a Late Starter by Caroline Fertleman
3) Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner by Jill M. Lekovic
4) Stress-Free Potty Training: A Commonsense Guide to Finding the Right Approach for Your Child by Sara Au
5) My Big Boy Potty by Joanna Cole

1: I haven't tried it. I know one family who did do a 3 day hell weekend, which the entire family spent literally in the bathroom, and at the end of it the kid was potty trained; but he was an autistic 9 year old and it was their last resort. Basically, I don't want to. The approach just doesn't feel right to me.

2: Good god, this is awful. Something like 60 pages of crappy gender essentialism. Never read this book.

3: This is my second favorite so far, although it has kind of stressed me out because it has made me think that we really should have started earlier. I'm mostly going by the ideas in this book.

The gist of it is that potty training has started happening much later in the U.S. and other countries with easy access to disposable diapers because, well, washing diapers all the time is fucking awful and no one does it for longer than they have to, but disposables are easy to leave the kid in. I knew that the one Russian woman in my mom's group said that in Russia all the kids are toilet trained by the age of two, and I know I was trained by like 18 months, though everyone says girls tend to learn earlier. But so Fertleman's idea is that you don't have to wait for the kid to walk or talk or like that, you just start by putting them on the potty at regular times.

4: This one is all about assigning your kid a Personality Type and talking about how training methods will differ based on whether you have an Internalizer, Strong-Willed Child, Goal-Directed Child, etc. I'm not a big fan of personality tests, but I have to admit that Mr. E and I had this conversation:

ME: So I was reading this book about your kid's Personality Type and it turns out we have an Internalizer.
ME: According to them, that means those kids that want to have all the information in advance, and don't want to do what they're not sure of. Says here, if you've never felt the need to babyproof your house, you've got an Internalizer.
Mr. E: We've never felt the need to babyproof?
ME: Not like some people do.
Mr. E: True.

(Totally true. We have trained our two-year-old not to touch electrical cords. We can just leave the laptops plugged in and lying around and he won't mess with the cords. The door came off the cupboard we keep the pots and pans in and we just lived with it for several months because he would play with them, sure, but really, not in a destructive way. He is a really, really easy kid.)

ME: The book says if you've got the kid who sits at the top of the slide watching all the other kids go down until he's good and ready to go, you've got an Internalizer.

We look at each other.

BOTH: That's our kid.
BOTH: I guess that's not surprising considering that's exactly the way I am.

(Note that I started this story by listing all the books I acquired and read through before I felt prepared to put my kid on the damn toilet.)

Pause.

BOTH: I was hoping he would be a little bit more adventurous than me, actually.

Anyway, the book says that for this type of kids, the key is to explain explain explain what's going to happen, and why, and let them come in the bathroom with you when you're using it to watch what you do so they can imitate it, and set up routines; and that's what comes naturally to me anyway (not surprising), so it's working for us so far.

5: Okay, technically this one is for the Junebug, but it's still my favorite.


So we got a Baby Bjorn potty seat, and we started putting him on it after all mealtimes. So far he loves it - I think he thinks it's a treat, because we read him a book once he's on it. But I'm worried that he's just too small to use the big toilet - we got him a step stool, but even with the step stool, there is no way he could climb up to it and sit down himself, let alone get his trousers out of the way. To sit on it he has to have his legs far enough apart that his trousers have to be all the way off, not just pulled down. Also, it worries me that he can't put his feet on the step stool even, he has to just balance on his butt, which I think might make it harder for the muscles to relax. So I just also got a regular kid's potty today. The big disadvantage of the kid's potty is that you have to empty it and then wash it out rather than just flushing. The big advantage is that the kid can (eventually (theoretically)) go over to it himself, pull down his own pants and sit his own butt on it without needing to communicate to a parent that he needs to be put on the toilet. Of course, today I tried to get him to sit on his brand new potty and he demanded to sit on the big toilet instead, so we'll just see how that goes.

So far he pooped in the toilet one time a week ago, and then this morning Mr. E put him on it right after he woke up, and he pooped AND PEED in it. There was great celebration this morning! We're going to try some intensive naked time this weekend with the new potty. I'll let you know how it goes, although hopefully not in too much detail.


Every time I've talked to my mom about Hypothetical New Sibling, she's warned us that the Junebug may act up when the baby comes and begged us to please be patient and understanding. Which, I have maybe not been as patient and understanding as I could have been about that, with her, because the thing is I already KNEW that, plus at this point she's been telling me once a week or so for several months. But then yesterday I found out why. Because, in my quest for advice and knowledge, I've been asking her about how she toilet trained me and my brother - when did she start, what did she do, how did it go, does she have any advice. And finally, yesterday, she gave me all the details she could remember about the process:

1) After a while, she knew around when I usually needed to go, and she started putting me on the potty at those times.
2) Then eventually I was toilet trained.
3) But when my brother was born (I was a little under two years old) I started refusing to use the potty.
4) So my dad would stand over me and yell about how goddammit if I kept refusing to poop my ass would explode, or something, and scare me and make me cry.

Sigh. I agreed that screaming at the baby and scaring him would not be helpful, which I think was very reassuring to her. I give my mom a lot of shit, but I should keep in mind that years of living with my dad is responsible for a quite lot of her damage. The worst part is, she honestly believed, and to some degree still believes, that he was the smart one and was right about everything. Which is terrible. Apparently he convinced her that a mother had to stay with the kid all the time until the kid was out of its first year, or else it would be traumatized and damaged for life; which explains why she was so worried that the Junebug would have terrible emotional problems from being put into daycare at 5 months. Ah, dad. It's probably a good thing we can never pay back all we owe our parents. Love and care and crotch punches would be so irremediably mixed up.

Comments

[loligo]

At work, we buy Diapers Are Not Forever by the case and hand it out whenever anyone starts potty training.

However, I'm still waiting for personal proof that diapers are not forever. Son is turning seven this summer, and still only stays dry at night about half the time, so he's still wearing them. Apparently there is some hormone that needs to kick in, to depress urine production at night, and he is among the 10% of children for whom it is quite delayed.

So just out of curiosity, what is their advice for Strong-Willed children? That was my kids. I remember when Squeaky was three and a half and *still* refusing to poop in the toilet, we picked out a special toy in the store together (a big Cars rubber ball), and we talked every day about how THIS GLORIOUS PRIZE WOULD BE HIS as soon as he managed to produce. And it still took another three months. He'd been peeing in the toilet for like a year, but he just could not bear to poop there.

Whee, fun times!

[snippy]

Wow, I had those same two kids. One didn't stay dry at night until PUBERTY. The other wouldn't poop in the toilet until he was 5 and we finally figured out what bribe would do it--a pair of cowboy boots. So glad to find out we're not the only ones.

Both are now in their 20s. The message is, everybody eventually gets potty trained!

[metaphortunate]

Welp, now I'm terrified.

[metaphortunate]

Basically their advice is try as much as possible to let them think things are their own idea; for example, rather than saying "If you pee in the potty I will take you to a movie!" saying things like "It would be fun to go see a movie, huh? But we can't really go because we would have to go change your diaper halfway through it. Someday when you're older and you know how to use the potty we can go see movies then." and then change the subject and not mention it again for a while. (Funny example, because as I understand it that's exactly backwards! When they're using the potty, then you have to take them out to use it.)

[amaebi]

I have an Internalizer. Mostly it works out well.

He ceased to be willing to poop in the potty when he was just about four. Once we noticed that it was systematic, we asked about it, and it was clearly Fraught. But that's all we could tell about it-- he wouldn't talk.

He also failed to respond to positive incentives for over a year.

A month and a half before his fifth birthday I let him known that on his birthday he would not get to wear pull-ups (and poop in them and then get another) ever again. And we went through a weekend of hell till his sphincter's awesome powers succumbed.

It turned out that once when he'd popped in the toilet at pre-school it was clogged when he flushed.

That was all it took.

Stuff happens.

He is eight-and-a-half now, and I still wash the sheets and various mattress-prophylactics nearly daily. Just recently it got to where his bladder capacity is apt to overwhelm the prophylaxis. And of course the social awkwardness of avoiding sleepovers and scout campings and so on is increasing.

There have been pressures on me to get up and get him up in the middle of the night, every night. And I tried. But I am now apt to have such a hard time getting back to sleep that it's quite debilitating very rapidly.

For me, the awesome bladder capacity is enough on-fireness that I have changed the answer to Bedtime Question Number Four.
#4: What is your job even while you're snoozing?
Long-term answer: To feel when I need to pee, wake up, go to the bathroom, pee in the toilet, and then I can sleep in your bed if I want to.
Now we add #4a: When you feel the pee, when you are rising toward the surface of sleep, what should you think?
New answer: I HAVE TO GET UP! IT'S AN EMERGENCY! THE WORLD MAY BE DESTROYED IF I DON'T GET UP AND PEE IN THE TOILET!

And in fact things improved radically right away. So far.There have been dry nights and n nights of just a little juiciness, and not a single total flood since....

[metaphortunate]

Oh my god. :/

You are a patient and wonderful (and funny!) mom. I hope to be so understanding.

[amaebi]

Gosh, what a nice thing to say.

I am in general so very fortunate with our easy, rational, community-minded boy. I can ask him, in a low-voltage kind of way, "Why kind of voice are you asking that in?" and he'll answer "Gripey" and lay off....

[snippy]

I used to make the bed up in 2 layers, with soak-up pads and fitted sheets, so when he got old enough he could just strip off the wet stuff and get back into bed without troubling me (unless he wanted/needed some positive attention).

I also put a large rug with a rubber base, like a bathroom rug, on the floor next to his bed so he could curl up there if he wanted rather than strip the bed. He just had to pull off his duvet (which somehow rarely got wet) and go back to sleep on the rug.

[amaebi]

Mine sleeps past and through it unless he decides it's GET UP IT'S AN EMERGENCY. :D He loves baths: I read to him while he bathes.

[thistleingrey]

We started with Diapers Are Not Forever, too, around 18 mo, and at a little past 2.5 yrs (who counts in months at this point), my daughter isn't 100% toilet trained. During the past two weeks she has become much more interested anew in sitting "like a grownup," which I chalk up to her best friend having decided to use the toilet three weeks ago, no fuss, no nothin'. For my daughter, it was clear that she couldn't tell for a long time when a bowel movement was on the move, and thus we backed off (she was bitterly disappointed every time it arrived into her diaper).

Also, FWIW, she wears 3T pants and they're just the right length and she still can't climb onto our toilet without help, especially in a hurry, even with a stool nearby...so we lift her onto it. Since a few months ago she disdains the potty seats and can brace with her arms (we steady her, too, because falling in is No Fun). That part doesn't seem crucial one way or another to using a toilet consistently [ETA: because she now says, slightly panicked, "Pee! I have to go pee!" and we run to the toilet together]. Our long delay of a year between start and nearly habituated is probably partly personality, partly that most of her classmates are younger and very decidedly in diapers.

(Yeah, I have had the "You must quit your job to stay with the baby!" thing from my father's childless brother. It is fortunate, whatever else underlies it, that my daughter is more social and confident about parental return/pickup than I was at the same age--I didn't go to a part-week thing till age three.)

[metaphortunate]

Fuck a bunch of assholes who need to tell other people what to do, man.

[thistleingrey]

Totally.

[veejane]

if I kept refusing to poop my ass would explode

I would not have said I was really an internalizer, but I can totally imagine child-me taking such a threat with grave certainty. I was easily convinced of doom (especially by myself).

[metaphortunate]

Well, I don't remember this at all, I was about two. My mom is clearly still traumatized though!

[cahn]

Yup. Got the Internalizer in spades. She's a really easy kid, but yes also on the hoping she'd be a little more adventurous than me.

Our three-year-old daughter was trained between 2 and 2.5, though she isn't yet night-trained (I think she may be getting close, though). I do think I stressed too much about it, though. Our friend trained her kid at almost-3, and it seems to have gone much more quickly. Though I guess it has been pretty nice not having to deal with diapers, it's balanced by the need to always know where the nearest potty is at all times.

[jesse_the_k]

Fascinating reading for a non-parent.

re: disposable diapers. Because of reasons, I have had to wear them. I think any adult who puts them on kids would benefit from wearing one for a couple of hours, and then using it, and then wearing it at least 10 more minutes. A revelatory experience.

Best wishes!

(Also: finding the parental pay back* experience has become much easier now that they're dead.)

*pay back
vs
payback
Lot of emotions ride on that space!

[metaphortunate]

You'd think! And yet, the baby never wants to have his diaper changed. It's weird.