What a weekend at the Kautzman house. Austin is pretty much potty trained now – free from diapers. We started Saturday morning by “throwing away” her remaining diapers and baby wipes and explaining the difference between those and big girl panties. The method we used relies on the parents to provide constant supervision & attention, positivity and communication to get her to learn when she needs to go potty and also to let mommy or daddy know when she has to go.
She had an accident in the first pair undies of the day right out of the gate and no accidents, including during nap, for the rest Saturday! It can’t be this easy can it? Also impressive was not only the fact that we were pushing lots of water like the method suggests, but she was also running a temperature and it rained all day Saturday (drip drip drip). That night, we woke her to go to the bathroom before we went to bed ourselves but that did not keep her from having an accident before morning.
Sunday morning we had a hailstorm. Luke didn’t get any pictures and Austin and I slept through it. We decided that we would not offer any liquids past 6pm and see if that worked for the upcoming night. She had one near accident that morning where she almost went in her underwear but quickly caught herself and ran to the bathroom instead. Austin did have an accident during the nap “process” – almost having the accident in order to get out of laying down. It worked. Rest of the day went fine but Luke and I began to wonder why she hadn’t made any BM’s. Luke went and got prunes after Austin went to bed for the night. Thanks to the power of prunes, Austin had a successful BM Monday morning after eating a few of them.
No water past 6pm and getting her up before our bedtime to go potty didn’t work Sunday night like we’d hoped. We had to keep reminding ourselves to stay positive and upbeat. This was tough because I was starting to doubt the, “no diapers during sleep time” doctrine altogether by Monday morning and after another accident during the Monday nap I was really tense. On the positive side though, she was accident free for the entire day, except for nap time.
Monday night we had a break though preceded by a very stressful 4 hours. Austin did not want to go to sleep and kept saying she needed to go potty. When we would go to the potty she would just sit there. Finally I told her that it’s time for bed and when I left the room she had an accident standing next to her bed (in protest perhaps). I changed her and put her back in bed and she had another accident (trying to impose her will on us perhaps). We changed the bedding and Austin’s PJ's. It was getting late by now and Luke decided to sleep on the floor next her bed to keep her in bed. We were all awake until about 11pm. We got her up to go potty at 2am and again at 6am. After some time to reflect on it, our thoughts on it are that maybe Austin was feeling ashamed of having accidents during her sleep so she reasoned that if she stayed awake she could avoid having an accident & letting us down? I don’t know exactly how or why it went down that way but we remained consistent as a family we got through it.
Accident free since! And its as easy as that folks! Positive reinforcement, positive encouragement, the ability to suppress frustration (both mine and Austin’s) caused by learning something new and understanding that toddlers aim to test your will can make potty training successful. Luke & I start counseling next week
