We will return to our regularly scheduled, non-potty-training posts just as soon as you finish reading this one

We started potty training in earnest on Monday, March 1. I realize my version of “in earnest” probably doesn't coincide with a lot of other people's versions (there was going to be nothing Boot Camp-y about our process, for example), but starting on Monday, March 1 (brand new week! brand new month!), we were going to wear underwear in the house, and we were going to wear training pants outside of the house. That was pretty much all I was going to shoot for, with very, very small expectations.

But by Thursday, four measly days later, we'd had only two very minor underwear accidents. That was definitely something to be proud of, but the kid was still peeing in his training pants when we were out, mostly because I wasn't exactly suggesting we hit up the bathroom every five minutes. I will admit, I was afraid potty training was going to take forever and I was relishing those last few selfish opportunities to be out and about, enjoying the last bits of freedom that diapers could afford me.

On Friday, we got home from an errand to find that Asher had stayed dry while we were out. The next day, he stayed dry during his nap. On Monday, he announced that he had to poop, and I suggested we try the potty, promising that I would let him have a diaper if it didn't work out. He thought for a moment and nodded. “You are going to try sitting on the potty,” he said very seriously. And then continued: “You can have a diaper if it doesn't work out.”

He sat in the bathroom for about 10 minutes, intermittently announcing his progress. “You are doing it!” he would call out excitedly. I would appear in the doorway. “Mama, leave,” he would say. Ten seconds later: “You are doing it! You are poopooing!” I played it cool, you guys, but when he wasn't watching, I was JUMPING UP AND DOWN WITH GLEE. He finished the job and... well. After we spent a respectable amount of time admiring the turd lying at the bottom of the bowl... that was it, actually. We haven't had an accident or a confrontation and I've only been giving out reward candy about 30 percent of the time and... yeah. Barring some kind of Horrible Regression, I think... I think we're potty trained. I mean, he stops playing when he needs to go and he GOES. And he even asked his Sunday School teacher to take him to the bathroom at church on Sunday. HE ASKED A NON-FAMILY MEMBER TO ACCOMPANY HIM TO THE TOILET. That is a really big deal for this kid. REALLY big. And I know, I KNOW he could regress (and we haven't started on NIGHTTIME training) but I don't think he will. He is already at the point where he doesn't think about it, and where we really feel we can trust him when he says he doesn't need to go, and for CRYING OUT LOUD, he's THREE AND A HALF. His body is physically there. All his... sphincters... or whatever are FULLY DEVELOPED and FUNCTIONING CORRECTLY.

I can hardly believe it. I fought the Poop War for so long and then the Pee War wasn't even a battle? I could have fought the Pee War stumbling drunk and wearing a blindfold. And a pegleg! Now we just have to schedule our official Steam Train Ride, because although he forgets about candy, he is not forgetting about the holy steam train ride. I am okay with this. I am reminding myself that at some point in the future, he could be obsessed with way more irritating-slash-nerdy things, like maybe unicycling or arson.

In conclusion, here are my final thoughts on potty training, if you are going to be like me and perhaps choose not to read a book or educate yourself in any official way before you begin, also known as “winging it”:

Wait until your kid is ready. I didn't know what that meant, really, and I still don't (my kid never stayed dry during a nap, for example, one of the Signs Your Kid Is Ready To Potty Train that always makes the magazine lists), but I would guess that if you try to start potty training with a kid who appears to not even be aware that toilets exist or that Mom and Dad don't wear diapers (seriously, this was MY CHILD) and who then gets anxious or nervous or frustrated or non-cooperative? Hold off. A few days, a week or two... just try again once the nerves have settled down.

Take it slow. I guess technically we could have done the “Hole Up At Home For Three Days” technique, but I don't really love being stuck ANYWHERE for 72 hours, so we wore underwear at home and training pants when we went out and at the beginning? I let him treat the training pants as diapers. As he got the underwear thing under control, I started explaining how we should treat our training pants the same way, and he seemed to catch on pretty quick. But if he hadn't? No big deal. I was in no rush to wear underwear out of the house and possibly deal with wet pants (his) and tears of frustration (mine).

Give lots of choices. I didn't really think choices mattered all that much, but when I was commanding Asher to pee somewhere, it was a little bit of a tension-releaser to let him choose whether he wanted to pee in the frog potty downstairs, or on the big potty upstairs using his Dora seat. He also has about 85,000 pairs of underwear to choose from and if he really resists using the bathroom before we go out somewhere, I give him the choice to pee at home, or tell him we have to use the potty first thing whenever we get where we're going. I am not afraid of public bathrooms, so using the Target bathroom is not an issue. I think he LIKES public bathrooms! Because it's somewhere NEW and he can ask me a dozen bizarro questions about the tampon dispenser. (“But WHY do you put money in it?”)

DON'T START WITH THE POOP. Oh, how much wiser I am now. Chances are, if something is going to make your kid uncomfortable or nervous concerning potty training, it is going to revolve around Number Two. At least, that's what I keep hearing from other moms. Number Two comes after Number One for a reason. RESPECT NUMBER TWO.

Buy reward candy you like to eat. BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO NEED IT. Also, you could probably use a beer. I'm just letting you know.

Comments

[Lauire]

OK, my child's only one, but I'm definitely filing this away under the "Good to know" stuff for a year (or two, or two and a half) from now. Good work by the way!

[Maggie]

Well - thanks. We're not quite 2 1/2 and will be potty training one of these days. At least I don't have to wing it all by myself.

[Kader]

I am so impressed with Asher. As an anxious adult (who was, wait for it, an anxious child), I understand so much of his bizarre behavior. And he did it! He overcame his fears and anxieties!
(Oh, and good for you, too. Having an anxious child? Not on the list of the world's best things. But we turn out pretty well!)

[Bren]

Yeah Asher! We started with the tinkle and are working on the poo. It went WAY better than I expected (probably because daycare put her on the potty like 257 times a day!). So glad for you that it is finally working!

[Maggie]

Great job, Asher! (AND MOM!!)
Although I have to say my first son was poop trained first because he went at the same time every day. It was easy to just rip the diaper off and sit him on the potty when I knew he was going to poop.

[foreveryoungin]

My daughter has the concept at just a shade before 2 yrs old but the panties part is what we are having trouble with. If there is anything on her bottom she treats it like a diaper. No matter what. I have tried talking to her about it but she doesn't want to get it. She wants to run nudie booty around the house. She likes to be "free".

[Marianne Ring]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! We haven't started potty training Nathan yet. (He turned 2 on 1/25) and I'm already feeling the pressure. Our little guy has ALL the signs of being ready, except interest in the potty. So, we're waiting. :)

[HereWeGoAJen]

Oh, yeah! Good for you guys!

[Angela]

Congratulations!!! Way to go for both of you!

[Penny]

The best additional advice I got on potty training was the idea that there are actually "windows" of opportunity. Sometime between 16 months and whenever, your child will become periodically interested in going to the potty instead of his pants. Which was good to know, because we missed one of the windows early on and then I was thinking that we'd missed our chance! When no, there would be another chance coming along soon.

Oh - and we found that another good method to try is to have your kid be around other kid(s) who are in the process of going to the potty. Peer pressure, or role models, or whatever it is, seems to make them interested in trying it out.

Night time stuff: that came fairly quickly after daytime potty training, but for a long time after that our daughter would ask us to go to the potty with her during the night. It was like newborn wakiness all over again. that kind of sucked, but I still was glad that we'd ended the diapers thing all together.

Congratulations on the potty training!

[Penny]

Oh- one MORE thing oh my god...

I don't know what you mean by "training pants" but I assume these are pull ups. We ditched the pull ups and went with these really thick training underwear that only appear to be sold at JCPenney's. They were GREAT. They are well and truely underwear, but they're nice and thick and hold the poo in and can absorb some pee. They were perfect when our daughter was through the pee training but had yet to master the poo thing.

[Jen]

*throws confetti* YAY! Also: I AM JEALOUS. heh

[kara]

Then again, you could do what we did and tell the child that "they" don't make diapers for three year olds. So on her third birthday, she woke up, took off her diaper (by herself), and said "No more diapers!" We had made it a very positive thing, not a "Oh no what are you going to do without diapers" kind of thing. She had her first accident TWO WEEKS later. We had been talking about it and mentally preparing for 2 months before her birthday, so she was on board that there simply weren't any more diapers when she was three. I'm a pretty all-or-nothing person on a lot of things, so luckily my child is similar enough to me that it worked out well. I'd much rather deal with a few days of intense effort than drag things out for weeks and weeks of low-level anxiety. We're all different, huh?

But that's actually not why I commented at all. I wanted to say, since you're openly saying that you haven't read or researched this stuff. . .and because you made that tiny mention about not starting on the night training yet. . .just wanted to let you know: when I took the girl for her 3 year check-up and told the pediatrician what we were doing with the cold-turkey potty training, I asked about night time issues (she was still wearing pull ups at night, since she didn't think of those as diapers, so our little lie was safe). The pediatrician said that he thinks the average is that most kids take about 6 months to be accident-free at night AFTER mastering the daytime potty stuff. 6 months. It was so good for me to hear this, because I had been thinking that we needed to start working on the night time right away. But what he said made me realize that we could take our time. And that worked perfectly. I didn't stress about "working" on it at all, actually. It was just about six months later that she finally got to the point of being dry almost every morning. At that point we switched to underwear at night, and we did have several accidents (way more than we ever had during the daytime), but I just stocked up on boxes of baking soda (to sprinkle on a peed-on mattress, it absorbs the moisture and makes it not smell!) and resigned myself to doing more laundry for a while. Then that passed too.

Just thought you might like to know. :)

[Meika]

Yayyyyyyyyyyy! One thing - maybe keep some spare pants in the car for a while. We still have occasional incidents several months into reliability... "I too late, Mama! Oh, well!"

Another vote for the windows of opportunity thing, too, and the incredible thing is that they actually start at birth. Seriously. I know it's insane. It was pretty amazing to see my three-month-old basically poop on command. It's hard to keep up with at that age, though, and I got lazy and now we're trying again in toddlerhood. She's developed the awareness over the last few weeks we've been working on it, and I've found that jellybeans and a certain electronic toy have gone a long way toward developing her interest in the process.

Anyway! Tangent! Congratulations a thousand times over!

[Sarah]

Oh my gosh..we have a frog potty downstairs that we store crayons in and a Dora potty upstairs that we are deathly afraid of. I'll just take your advice and wait until she's ready. I'll be sure to remove the crayons though!

[Carrie]

Yay! I hope he keeps at it! That is great! The only potty training advice I could ever give anyone is don't do it while you're pregnant, because you're going to need to drink. A lot. I declared my 3/12 yr old daughter completely (day) potty trained 2 months ago. Then a month ago she just stopped. Poops in her pants everyday, has no interest in going potty, puts up unholy fights when we try to get her to go. I am out of ideas and so frustrated.

[Karen]

I needed to read this. I am kind of pulling my hair out with my third, the same way I pulled my hair out with my second. He obviously knows when he's going to poop, because he scuttles away to the train table and does it there in his diaper. He still hasn't absorbed my advice to "TELL Mommy before you poop and we'll get you on the potty." He turned 3 in December. I have to remember that my second kid didn't fully train until he was 3 1/2, and just because their oldest brother trained at 2 is no predictor of their training success.

Although he does seem to have cottoned onto the "reward" idea when he pees on the potty, so maybe i'm making progress? Huh/.

[Kimberly]

Yea Asher! I am now hoping that my first didn't spoil me b/c we did the 3 day potty training thing (and yeah I went a little crazy in the house for 72 hours but totally worth it!) and it totally worked for day and night. It sucked at first but then it was awesome! We didn't really push the issue before the 3 day event since I was still working (we waited until summer time when I was off). We'll see if it works for my second child so that's what I recommend but only because that's all I know!