No, really, I want to know, because he/she should be stoned. I don't mean in the drug-induced coma kind of way. I mean in the rocks thrown at him/her kind of way. Yeah. Maybe not until death but at least until the point of severe fear and embarrassment. Yeah.
That might sound extreme, especially coming from me, but I've completely lost my mind. Potty training has made me totally lose all grip on reality. I've flipped. Yeah.
We are three weeks deep into the process here at the Hardison household, and I don't really feel like we've made much progress at all. Layton is so stubborn. He is (I think) scared to poop on the potty, so he holds it in basically all day (thus, constipating himself). He will wait until he is either a) wearing a pull-up at nap time, giving him the freedom to do his business or b) past the point of no return and suffers a major blowout in his underwear. What's so scary about the potty? I'll never understand.
Underwear. Stinky underwear. Pee-filled underwear. Sheesh. I've washed more underwear and sheets in the last 3 weeks than I have in my whole life (that's probably no exaggeration). Layton has no issue with peeing! Let me amend that. He can pee on command. Yeah. All the time. Every 10 minutes in fact. I've never seen anything like it. How can he have that much pee in him allowing him to go multiple times per hour?? It's nuts. He really is doing great with going #1 in the potty. He's also doing great going #1 in his pants -- MULTIPLE times per day. I think there are at least a dozen pairs of underwear in the washer right now. Those same dozen were clean this morning; I'm just sayin'. Thank goodness for naps and pull-ups. Those are my saving grace at times.
Layton Cooper, underwear model extraordinaire...
Bribery. Yeah, bribery. We are to that point. And not just a little bit of bribery; no, I'm talking full- blown, merciless, embarrassing level of bad parenting, shame-on-us pitiful BRIBERY. We've tried everything all the experts say. Stand-alone potty, traditional potty with child seat thing that you put on top of it, cold turkey going to underwear, running around naked, making him clean up his own messes, pull-ups, potty dances and praises, stickers, smiley faces, tattoos, incentive charts with prizes, M&Ms, sound timers, animated apps, silent timers, self-initiation.......... I could go on for days. Some things work for some... umm, hours (minutes, really). Nothing really seems to be effective for long. This far into the process, I had hoped it would start to become autonomous, but it hasn't at all. We want him to go to preschool in the fall, and he'll need to be trained as a prerequisite. But, he's not. He's so untrained in fact that just yesterday he peed directly on the couch and then even more directly right on his mommy. I swear it was on purpose. He then looked at us and grinned as if to say, "Yeah, that's right. That just happened. I just peed on everything; whatcha gonna do about it? I'm the boss."
So yeah. Bribery. Today I told him it was potty break time and for him to head to the bathroom. I then headed to the kitchen to get an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer. A treat for me for being such a good parent?? Hardly. I took that bad boy with us to the potty and essentially DANGLED that sweet thing in front of my son's eyes and told him if he'd make poop go into the potty that he could eat the ice cream...
It worked.
Feel free to begin judgment now. Hahahahahaha. But, when you are finished, please educate me or, better yet, come train my son. Yeah.
"What ever it takes-do it!" was always my motto.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it is about pooping in the potty that so traumatizes them, but my grandson did the same thing. He would cause so much constipation, they'd have to give him enemas to release it all. It was awful! Sometimes I wonder if we try too soon. What do I know? My son was a bed wetter until 3rd grade. I remember the pediatrician telling me about a nerve that goes from the kidneys to the brain. He said the bed wetting will not go away until that nerve is completely connected. It literally stopped overnight. Nothing else worked-absolutely nothing.
I totally agree! I have trained 1.5 children so far. I say 1.5 because our 4year old still can not go through the night without a pull up! I know it's hard trust me we resorted to all of the above too, even had a poopy party with cake ice cream and balloons when it actually happened! The cake read "congratulations" just for me. All I can say is it will happen on his time unfortunately, and you will still be washing sheets and underwear for a long time!
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