Potty Trained!

"Push!" my husband and I cry together in unison. "Don't cross your legs!" I yell out. It's 1 a.m. in the morning and my toddler is crumpled at the foot of our bed, twisting her legs together and clenching her teeth. Poo holding, it's a problem. 

Rosie can usually hold it for 5 or 6 days. The last couple days of the poo strike are the worst because it involves a lot of crying, a lot of poo stripes in the pull-up, and no appetite. Prune juice would be helpful if she didn't have an iron will. So for weeks, we urge Rosie to go poo - on the potty, in her pants, on the kitchen counter, in anyway at all.

One day I read in a blog that poo holding is a result of a bad pooping experience. Maybe it was painful once, and the toddler feels that they can avoid the experience by holding their poo indefinitely. It was then that I realized how scary a bowel movement must be for her.

So it's 1 a.m. and my husband and I are coaching very enthusiastically for Rosie to poop in her pull-up when I get a double revelation:
1. If she's sitting on a potty, maybe she won't be able to twist her legs and hold her poo.
2. Instead of loud coaching, maybe she needs calm reassurances and support. 

I lead Rosie to her pink princess potty and sit her down. When the urge to poo comes, she instinctively tenses up and tries to cross her legs. "It's okay, just keep sitting. Breathe. It will be okay. The poo poo will come out." I tell her. She still tries to fight it, but maybe it's the sitting down, maybe it's my zen approach, but it comes out. Immediately, her face washes over in relief. Even before I am finished cleaning her potty out, she falls asleep on the floor. 

I learned a big lesson that day. I could teach Rosie to go to potty MY WAY and face a lot of set backs, or I could teach Rosie to go potty HER WAY. So for parents reading this, this post isn't about how to teach your kid to go potty but how to find out how your kid wants to learn to go potty. (That was a long sentence).

So with moving forward on Rosie's potty training, I tried to keep an open mind and adjust my methods to fit her. For example, Rosie's biggest problem was that she could never get to the potty in time to pee. She'd be playing, then she'd stand up and look at me. 

"I go pee pee," she'd say with a smile. 

I'd rush her to the bathroom, but then realize that when she said, "I go pee pee," she meant "I go pee pee now." 

As I'd help her change to new pull-ups, I'd tell her, "You need to tell Mommy before you go pee. You need to tell Mommy and then we'll run to the potty together." 

She'd nod, but she didn't truly understand. 

I sat in bed pondering this one night, and in the darkness of the room, the answer glimmered forth. Maybe she needs someone to teach her how to hold it. If she could hold her pee for just 30 seconds, it would give me enough time to get her to a potty. Then I wondered, "How shall I teach her to hold it? How does she learn best?"

My daughter is a visual learner. She loves to point to pictures and repeat their names. She also likes to watch YouTube videos. Slowly, a plan formed in my mind. 

The next day, I woke up early and created some charts on my computer. There are plenty of free potty training charts online, but I needed to personalize this for Rosie. Here are the charts I came up with: 

1. Potty Steps

This chart is all about the steps of how to go potty. Rosie knew how to go pee pee when she was on the potty, but she needed visual steps on how to get there. The pictures of the princess come from a YouTube video(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFAXZU8YFsk) which I let Rosie watch several times. It helped her see there is a non-verbal way to both hold in the pee AND tell me she needed to go. 

You wouldn't believe how much Rosie loved this chart. To this day, she points to the pictures on this chart and repeats the steps to herself.

2. Rosie's Potty Chart

This chart leads to a reward that Rosie is crazy about: ice cream. I also put a stolen picture of Elmo because she loves Elmo. I planned it out that if Rosie went to the potty 10 times, she would get an ice cream cone from McDonalds. Incidentally, she goes pee about 10 times in one day - that's a good time frame for a toddler to work for a goal and get a reward. Any less rewards a day, Rosie would probably get discouraged or forget. Any more rewards in a day and the rewards would be meaningless - plus I'd be poor. 

Well, did it work?

These pictures speaks for themselves:

Rosie has gone close to a month without wetting or pooping her pants. Now, every time she needs to go pee or poo, she'll grab her crotch and squirm and say, "I need to go." This is the potty dance. I escort her to the potty and her business is taken care of, without crying or trauma or impatience. I wake up smiling everyday.

Not to make it seem like this was easy - it was the most trying teaching experience in my whole life, and it took months and months and lots of accidents. But I hope it can give hope to a lot of desperate parents out there. You know your child and you know how they learn best. Just observe and let them teach you how to teach them.