Pretending to Potty Train

Ask any parent, and they will tell you one of the more difficult times in raising children, is potty training.  For some kids it is easier, but even the easiest of kids still have accidents.  It's not fun cleaning pee in various puddles around your house.  Sonya wasn't too bad.  I put her in underwear two months before her third birthday.  She had 2 accidents that day and then she pretty much had it.  Well, except for the pooping.  She did NOT want to poop in the potty and held out for 2 days, waiting for me to put a diaper back on her.  When she realized it wasn't going to happen, she gave in and used her little potty.  That was all it took for her.  She did have pee accidents, during the day, every once in a while.  It took her a while to not have accidents at night too, but overall the experience wasn't horrific. 

Then there's my nephew, Zach.  I'm pretty sure Beth was ready to go the way of potty training dogs and crate Zach.  It took the better part of the past year to get him to poop in the potty consistently.  He had no problem going in the potty, but he had no problem going in his underwear either.  Whatever was most convenient for him at the time was what he did. Eventually they all learn, even though Beth did think Zach would be going to high school in diapers.  It seems that he does finally get it now. This is good because now he won't have to worry about being made fun of in the locker room.  Now that Lana is approaching 2 1/2 I though it might be a good time to see where we stood with her.  Let the games begin!

I decided to put her in underwear at the beginning of the week.  She managed to poop in her diaper  before I had a chance to change her, so I knew I wouldn't be dealing with that.  Instead we concentrated on the peeing.  And she did so well!  I asked her every so often if she had dry pants and she said she did.  Amazingly, in fact she DID!  Then we would head to the bathroom where she would pee and I would give her an M&M as a reward.  She didn't have one accident all day until after her bath when she insisted on wearing underwear.  I let her, figuring I'd put her in a diaper before bed.  She did pee in those underwear, but still, one accident all day!  "Lana may turn out to be easy with something after all!" I stupidly thought.  Why do I even put thoughts like that out there?  

Tuesday was not as successful.  She did pee in the potty quite a few times.  However, for the amount of times she peed in the potty, she peed somewhere else too, the floor, the living room rug, the brand new couch!  Let me say that again-The BRAND NEW COUCH!  Okay, it wasn't that bad.  It cleaned up very well, actually.  Still, I wasn't as confident in her ability to pick this up so quickly now.  I had already decided at the beginning of the week that this was a trial period.  If she had a hard time we could go back to diapers and try again in a month or so. Still, I was willing to give it another go before I  called it quits.

This morning I put underwear on her right away.  About 20 minutes later she decided she had to poop and was planning on doing it in the underwear.  I managed to catch her and rushed her to the potty where she protested, cried, and flat out refused to poop on the potty.  I promised her a lollipop, or 12 bags of M&Ms, or hell, even a pony if she would just go.  But nope.  Didn't happen.  So I let her leave the bathroom.  About half an hour later, I caught her just about to go again. I tried to do the same thing as before with unfortunately, the exact same result.  Now I had an even crankier Lana, because twice she was ready to go and twice I kept it from happening.  I thought if I could just get her to do it in the toilet once she'd be over whatever fears she had, but it was just not happening.  And now my child was backed up, so to speak.

 I left her alone with Mickey for a bit then eventually I asked her if she was dry.  She told me yes.  She wasn't.  She peed in the potty anyway.  I decided I needed to make my way to my own potty, where Lana eventually followed me.  Once again I asked if she was dry only to get one more lie from her.  I finally conceded that this wasn't working right now, so I put her back in a diaper vowing to try again in a month.  I thought maybe she would question why she didn't get to wear her big girl underwear anymore, but she was unfazed by the diaper.  Five minutes after putting it on her she came back and announced she had pooped. 

Yeah, she's not quite ready for the potty training yet.