I have been following the blog, We Are That Family, for awhile now, but am just compelled to post my first Works-For-Me Wednesday post. Usually, people post hints and tips of things that "work for them." Today is a backwards edition...meaning I can ask a question and pray that someone can share with me some hints or tips that can help me with my problem.You wonder, what is her problem? My problem: My couple of days away from being three year old, Noah, is seriously, freaked out by the potty. He tells me there are "alligators are in there." Or "no, I do not need to go potty, I'm not wet!" You name it, he comes up with it. We have done days in just undies, where we set a timer and get on the potty often, but no fail, the moment we get off the potty he goes in his undies, we read potty books, we talk about it often, but he is absolutely resistant. Just does not even want to sit on the potty. It is almost a struggle just to get him there. We have a one year old also, so I find it hard to have one on one time with Noah to work with him.
Please, if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!!! I do not want to go to his three year check up and say we have had no progress with potty training!!!!!!!!!!
9 comments:
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Have you have tried to tell him to feed the potty. I don't know why that works for some. I also had both my boys sit backwards on the potty. They wanted nothing to do with the training potty. We went through a period of when they thought they will would fall in the big potty, too. Good Luck!
I am not sure... my son is getting closer to 4 and we are still trying to begin potty training. At this point, I think I would just lay off and let him wait a bit until he is more ready.
Just wondering if you have tried a kiddo potty chair though. That might make a difference if you haven't.
My son spent a couple of months being naked from the waist down...sure I had to clean up a few puddles (thankfully most of our apartment was laminate floor rather than carpet), but mostly nudity worked. :)
As for being scared of the big toilet: I can relate. Little kids have little tiny tooshies, and falling in is a valid fear, even if they don't recognize that that's what they're afraid of. I remember being afraid of something coming up the toilet to bite my behind as I sat as well (and I was like 8!!) Have you tried a little potty? Have you tried getting one of those little seats that sits on the toilet and makes it smaller for the child (so they dont' fall in)? That helped my first son a lot.
We also made games--drop a cheerio in the toilet, then try to 'bomb' it with the stream of peepee. (Daddy demonstrated for him and the kiddo was very impressed!) For a while I put a blue toilet puck in the tank so he could make 'magic pee' and turn the water green. We had skiddles as a reward for making something in the toilet... Basically just try to make it positive rather than stressful.
Another thing we did was to put the potty chair in the living room in front of the tv, and let him watch a movie while sitting on the pot...inevitably by the end of the movie he'd made something, so we could celebrate, and that helped motivate him to use it other times as well.
My daughter had a bad experience with one of those self flushing toilets and got totally freaked out and wouldn't go anymore. THEN, once we got her back to being somewhat interested she got constipated and now associated the toilet with the hurtful poop! Sooo, I tell you all this to say that we had to try a couple different things before we found something that got her interested again.... one thing we tried was buying a reward, but she couldn't have it unless she actually did the potty in the toilet. She knew it was there and it took a while for it to motivate her to actually go. Another thing I have hear that works for some kids, is to find something they want (a toy or something) and tell them as soon as they go potty on the toilet they can go buy this particular reward.
Good luck. I know it is hard!!
I have three boys (19, 23 and 27 now) and a daughter who is 25. All three boys weren't trained until they were 3 1/2, but when they were done, they were done. My daughter potty-trained by 2 1/2 but had many accidents for at least six months afterward.
I promise you, your son will not get on the kindergarten bus is diapers! If something's making him afraid, don't push him. Drop the subject entirely for a while and I bet he'll come around soon enough on his own!
BTW--I don't know if they still exist, but I remember papers that look like targets that you could throw in the water. Aim and shoot, LOL!
I'd go with it, if he tells you there are aligators in there or is scared something is going to come up and bite him, tell him you have a "super power spray" (room freshener) you could even cover the bottle with paper and make it look all fancy, and spray it in the toilet before he goes. Tell him it kills or any word a 3 year old would be alright with. But the jist of it is this spray won't let anything get him! Sometimes if you yu can't beat em' join em'!! He'll get it soon enough!
I put a little potty in the dining room for my daughter to use. I know it's silly, but she really didn't like the big toilet. I also think it helped her, because she could see it from the family room. The big toilet is one of those "out of sight, out of mind" things.
For a while our daughter wouldn't tell us when she needed to go, and it was so frustrating! We eventually resorted to bribery (which I thought I would never do). We told her that if she told us she needed to use the potty, and then something came out in the potty, she would get a piece of chocolate (an M&M, which we kept in a cupboard in the bathroom). It took a couple of days for her to understand that she had to tell us first before she would get the chocolate, but once she caught on, it definitely helped!
I increased her fluid intake to increase the amount of bathroom breaks - although it meant more puddles for a while! After she became pretty consistent, it was surprisingly easy to wean her off the treat after a vacation (we didn't bring the M&Ms on vacation).
Now she tells us most times when she needs to use the potty, and can go by herself if she has non-button pants on. She still has the occasional accident when she's busy playing and holds it, though, and sometimes she swears she doesn't have to go when I can tell she does - letting her choose the upstairs or downstairs bathroom
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