Potty Training is a Crappy Job!

I feel for Moosh in Indy and trying to potty train the Moosh! That is crappy job! LOL

I hated that job of motherhood too, but I hate having to change diapers more! In fact if anyone has ever wondered why my blog's name is Mommy Going Crazy it is because I started this blog when I was in the middle or trying to potty train my little dude. Well, actually I had potty trained him in 4 days. He did awesome! Then 2 weeks later he regressed and was pooping everywhere! You can go back to my very first post and read it here. FUN TIMES! Well I actually nipped that in the butt (HA HA HA) with another chart and a little threat and poof there you have it, I wasn't cleaning up the floors like I had a new puppy anymore.

My little princess was not that way. It took her 2 days and she was potty trained and we have never looked back. Now, I just have one more and I will hopefully be able to cross that off the mommy list of things to do.

Some of you have asked me how I did it. I will tell all of you now. This will be a REALLY long post, but I swear it works if you are interested. If you don't care I will post something cute my little princess said tonight about 2 minutes after I post this crazy post. So here we go. (Oh yea, Cassie, I just copied and pasted the email that I sent you earlier.)

Little Dude was almost 3 (a little old actually, I would recommend with boys starting at about 18 months. I have a theory on this. If you have a boy and want to know what that is email me, I will make another post dedicated to that.) Little Princess was also almost 3 as well. We could have started earlier with her too, but I got lazy after we moved.

Anyway, here is how I did it. First you have to teach them the difference between wet and dry. Take the panties and show her and let her feel them when they are dry. Then get them wet and let her feel them when they are wet. Explain that you are going to teach her how to keep them dry. Wet panties are not good. Then I made a chart before hand. One side of the chart had a little happy face to put up a little happy faces every time her panties were dry. Then on the other side were sad water drop faces to put up a sad face every time her panties were wet. I explained the chart the night before we started. I told her that by the end of the week if she had more happy faces than sad we will take her to the store and she can pick one toy. The morning we started the ENTIRE day was for potty training. I actually took Little Dude to a babysitter for the entire day. We started by saying there was no more diapers. And mean it! No matter how bad it gets DON'T EVER PUT A DIAPER BACK ON HER! It really is just too confusing.

So then the fun starts. You have to start off taking her to the potty about every 15 minutes or so. If her panties are dry, let her put up a happy face on her chart. If they are wet then she has to have a sad face. If she sits there for a few minutes and doesn't go, don't make her sit there. You will be taking her frequent enough that there isn't a need to make her sit there forever. Really, 2-5 minutes is enough. So for the first hour or so set a timer to remind you to take her every 15 minutes. Then after that you can make it to 20 or even 25 minutes. By the evening, you will still increase the time every couple of hours. You will eventually get her to go in the potty and just give her TONS of praise. We had a little dance that we would do. Make it a so she gets so much praise that she will WANT to go to the potty and not on her bedroom floor. And every time make sure to put her happy face on the chart.

During the night let her wear panties or even a pull up BUT NOT A DIAPER! I didn't even bother with pull ups actually. I just put TONS of towels on the bed (I have fears of pee stained mattresses) just in case. You can even put a garbage bag under her sheets for extra protection. I even got up to check on her in the middle of the night just to make sure she didn't sleep through an accident. But she was having dry diapers at night by this time that she slept through the night and stayed dry!

The next day is just about the same. I can guess that she won't go poop the first day, but she will the second day. So you will want to pick up where you left off. If you were taking her potty every 45 minutes or so make sure you do that the next morning. She will have the pee thing down pretty well, but if she has an accident start to get a little annoyed and let her see is. The next day will be harsh when she has an accident so you need to lead up to it a little, so let her know how disappointed you are. Still lots of praise though for going in the potty. Through day two you will see that she is getting the hang of it (hopefully) and will start to tell you when she needs to go. You won't need to be as routine (still do it though if she needs it) as the day before.

By day 3 you will have to be more tough. This is something that some people didn't agree with me on, but it TOTALLY worked. So you decide, but you need to punish them for having an accident. In our house if you have an accident after the 3 day you have to take a cold bath. Both of my kids actually had it pretty much down by then though. We had a few accidents with Little Dude after about 2 weeks, but I went back to a chart with him and it fixed it. I know that this is really long, but it kind of has to be detailed to make it work.

If anyone gives it a try let me know, it would be fun to see if I helped anyone. Or if anyone has any questions email me!