Potty Training

It seems that Turner potty trained himself this week.  I can't believe it!  After all of the horror stories I've heard over the years, I just assumed that this would be a really tough experience.

But, as usual, I am going to blog this post for my future self and for my friends when they asked me what we did to get our kids potty trained.  When I've asked other moms what they did, they either give me a vague answer because they don't remember, or they tell me how hard it was and that they weren't trained until they were 12 or something crazy like that!  Okay, maybe not 12, but definitely not 2 years and 3 months old.  So this kind of caught me by surprise.

So...what we've done was mostly by accident and they've just happened to encourage Turner to go to the bathroom on the toilet.

He's never been a big fan of clothes, so he's mostly naked at home.  For a while (around 18 months) he had fun peeing on the potty every once in a while but would mostly wear "naked diapers" as he called it.  So we let him take off his diaper when he wanted to and if he wanted to run around naked, he got to do that too.  He never peed when he was naked and I think that taught him bladder control early on.  But I knew he wasn't ready mainly because he couldn't get his own pants off by himself, so I couldn't see how that could work.  Plus, he would pee in the toilet and then poop behind a chair or couch for some reason, and I didn't want to keep doing that for too much longer!

Also, I was hesitant to potty train before Tillman was born because I've heard so many people say that the big kid will revert once the baby comes and I didn't want to go through the process twice.

But we never pushed it and we always made a big celebration out of it when he would go.  So it was "Come see, mommy.  Show you!" and we would clap and high five and make a big production and that helped to build his confidence.

And we would also celebrate when mommy and daddy went to the bathroom on the potty.  He would say, "Good job, mommy.  Mommy went pee pee." and we would clap together.  You gotta do what you gotta do! 



Also, Troy's been very supportive of Turner learning and I think there's a key there to dad playing a role too, especially for boys.  Dad pees, I pee.  Plus, anything dad does is cool, and if dad tells me I'm amazing (mommy thinks I'm amazing when I sneeze and blink) then it must be really cool!

And then this week I knew it had clicked because he ran to the potty and said "I gotta poo poo!" and he went all by himself.  So we tried our first outing going to the grocery store and he did great.  Then he went to the Y twice and didn't pee.  He's doing so great!  No accidents and no diapers for the last four days!  So from now on if he does pee in his underwear, I will know it was a fluke or an accident.  He's definitely ready!

So, in short, I think that we did a lot to support and encourage Turner potty training, but he ultimately made the decision that he was ready.  And I don't think we're going back to diapers...pretty exciting and I'm very proud of my boy!