Sunday, January 11, 2009

Update on potty training bootcamp

Fang provides the latest.

Tips from the trenches are much appreciated.

My interactions with Lucas are a bit more intellectual. Here he is selecting bedtime reading from my poetry collection.


Lucas: I want this one. And this one.

Me, taking the books from him: Sylvia Plath and Hart Crane? Excellent choices. Try not to have nightmares.

4 comments:

Admin said...

awe. that's cute.

mburtis said...

I know the conventional wisdom is that boys and girls are vastly different in the potty-training area, but FWIW I think the turning point for us was when I resorted to blatant, unabashed bribery. If she stayed clean/dry at daycare I'd take her to the grocery store and let her pick whatever was her heart's desire in the toy aisle. Not exactly the route I wanted to take, but desperate times, desperate measures, yada yada yada.

I probably dropped $20 in crappy toys and books over the course of two weeks, but it was worth every penny. :)

Anonymous said...

For a boy - target practice. Take a role of toilet paper and draw a smiley face on each square. Let him "sink" them. Offer to let him practice as much as he wants to. He gets to use the "special" toilet paper each time he lets you know he has to go.

Underwear bribery is also key. Thomas the train (or other beloved character) for the first set of the day. After the first accident, plain white. No more Thomas until the next day. Harsh but effective....

He'll catch on. Sometimes it just takes a while.

Delamelia said...

Over the course of the last 18 years my family and I have jointly potty trained 5 children: 3 boys, and 2 girls. Each was a little different, and it untimately came down to: #1 they had to care. #2 moderate bribery. For one of the five M&Ms worked. For a few others a combination of stickers and candy worked. As for Day Care... hmmm. You might just have to wait until he cares. Morgan was potty trained pretty quickly durring the day but wore pull-ups to bed until she was in Kindergarden and beyond. Every time we thought we had it licked she'd have another accident.

As for the reading material he chooses: awesome! Morgan likes to watch shows on Quantum Physics with me. She only has some trouble understanding sub-atomic particles. The other theories and such seem all good to her! Some of her favorite shows are: Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, and (of course) Sponge Bob.

Good luck with the Potty Battles. Try not to stress over it too much. It WILL happen one way or another! =)