Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The trials and tribulations of toilet training...

There have been many difficult things about being a parent, least of all the latest challenge.... Toilet training! 

It's been a bit tricky as Ethan goes to daycare 5 days a week so we only have him with us 2 days a week. We really wanted to get Ethan well on the trail of being toilet trained at home so that daycare can build on it for us. Unfortunately that means toilet training opportunities are few and far between. We had a first attempt during the September long weekend... But 25 pairs of wet and poo-ey undies later we decided Ethan wasn't ready.

A month or so later Ethan randomly started pooing on the toilet for around 6 days straight! So strange but we went with it! I started to think that this toilet training lark may have been easier than we were expecting. But it didn't last long!!!

As daycare closed over Christmas we decided to give toilet training a VERY good go! But as with previous attempts it really didn't go well at all initially... Here is an excerpt from a diary of a toilet training parent:

Mum: do you need to wee?
Toddler: no
Mum: are you sure you don't need to wee?
Toddler: NO mum!!!
Mum: should we try anyway?
Toddler: no!


2.8 seconds later



Toddler: wet undies mama

Mum: sigh!!!

Then Ethan decided to be all polite about it... so when we ask if he needs to go to the toilet he says "no-fankyou mama/daddy".... 

We were near our wits end and trying everything we could think of. Then one day Jason and Ethan went to the park and they saw some kids with great diggers, so Jason promised a new digger if Ethan went to the toilet. 

Later that day Ethan asked for his new digger, we said if he went to the toilet on the loo.... and low and behold he did, them promptly said - lets go to the shops for my new digger!!!!!!

So we had cracked Ethan's "currency"... we found a 4 pack of small diggers (and a big one from him he hadn't played with for ages". They went on the rack in the toilet ready to reward!

After a day or two we also introduced some small bags on MnMs as I didn't want to have to keep buying diggers!

Here are the "rewards" ( remember the big digger was one from the back of his toy cupboard).

Here is Ethan playing with the spoils of his efforts on the loo!
We probably get one accident a day on average (including the odd shower poo - my least favourite of them all). Last week Ethan had three accident free days at daycare and he has been waking up with dry nappies in the mornings - not that we are attempting night training yet! 

2 comments:

Meghan Maloney Photography said...

Ah yes I remember those days fondly (not!). We like you did it with Mylo over the Christmas break but we had pooey undies for a few weeks afterwards coming home from daycare which was pretty unpleasant - our adventures sound very similar if you want to read any of ours they are here:

http://www.mnmsadventures.com/2012/01/is-someone-going-potty.html

http://www.mnmsadventures.com/2012/01/potty-progress.html

http://www.mnmsadventures.com/2012/03/potty-progress-poo-whisperer.html

Good luck - keep calm and potty on!!!

Josie Lewis said...

Well doen Jac - Paige took 7 months of toilet training before she would poo on the toilet! That is a lot of pooey undies! It took us ages to work our her "currency" - she just wasnt interested. Even when she finally chose her reward (Woody from Toy Story) it took about ten days after he was purchased and put on the shelf before she pooed in the toilet!