I wrote this about 2 months ago--don't want to put more shame on jack than is due
:)
I hate to speak too soon--I'm trying not to make eye contact with the situation as I'm afraid some backsliding will occur--but Jack has been wearing underwear and using the potty for 3 days now! I was fairly certain we were going to have to retract our preschool sign up or just fake it every day and pack a change of clothes. I thought he would never do it! He is over 3 and a half and is just now showing interest despite my daily hint dropping, suggestions and public shaming basically ("See Jack,
he goes to the potty and he is
only two and a half").
I guess it came as a surprise that Jack would take as long as he has. Ben potty trained himself after being let loose in the back yard naked and realizing he could pee on trees--much to my chagrin as I wanted to stick with easy diapers for a bit longer as I was juggling 4 kids, one of them a newborn. Also Ben couldn't even say the word potty (or many other words really) so the fact that he was silent yet using the potty like a rock star at 2.5 was shocking to me. So I assumed Jack would follow suit as he was verbal early on and somehow learned colors, shapes and some letters behind my back.
Nope.
He has been perfectly content to just wallow in his diapers and all that they contain regardless of the stench. Nearly every morning we have a little talk about big boys and little boys and he confidently reported he was a little boy and wanted to wear diapers. No potty on the horizon for him. I tried dangling all sorts of proverbial carrots--toys, treats, trips to target for new undies (in lieu of nap even), preschool, Disney World----he would not be budged.
One day this spring I decided just to put him in underwear--thought maybe I wasn't being pushy enough. I mean he was a solid 3.5 years of age. So at 8 am the undies went on. By 8:30 he had accident #1. By 9am accident #2 and by 10 am accident #3 and we were back in diapers.
I decided to continue with the daily potty chats, casually left some potty library books in his bed and around the house, called for him to watch Ben pee whenever possible, left him pantless in the backyard quite a bit and still no interest. When I'd sit him on the potty he would gladly sit but then say "My tummy says it's all gone!" or he would insist he just doesn't pee in general.
Giant boxes of pampers from amazon continued to appear on my front porch. I had to buy swim diapers for this summer (I threw mine out last summer assuming we would for sure be done by this summer!).
And then we went to Target and I showed him the array of underwear available to him if he would just use the potty. Thomas, super heroes, minions, paw patrol, you name it. I was doing my best Vanna White in the underwear aisle to entice my novice potty boy. So he settled on some paw patrol undies (don't think he has ever seen it in his life) and he was promised full use of them if he just started to use the potty. Later that day he had a dry diaper, he sat on the potty and I helped it along a bit by dousing his nethers with warm water and lo and behold he actually peed! The rest has been downhill from there (mostly, other than a surprise poop when I think he forgot he was wearing underwear) and now he is resistant even to pull ups at night.
Other than the long wait potty training #4 has been surprisingly easy as I have outsourced all the training to his sibs. Whenever Jack senses the urge to go he just starts frantically hollering about it and the nearest sibling yanks down shorts and undies and plops him up on the toilet and they even know to point the general down to avoid a shower. Who knew they could be so helpful?
It's pretty hilarious to watch. Today was his first successful #2 and they were all clustered around him as he sat perched on the potty--all 3 of them shouting encouragement and advice on how to accomplish the task. Jack, in true male fashion, took his time. The girls quickly lost interest but Ben stayed with him out of solidarity--reading him books and just chatting it up. 10 minutes later Ben cam bursting out of the bathroom beaming, thrust his arms to the sky in his best touchdown pose and yelled "Jackie pooped!" Hallelujah.
He was promised a toy for successful #2s and luckily I got a bag of Thomas trains at a garage sale just last week that I intended to use for his birthday but this was much more pressing. So he was rewarded for his efforts with a crane and a little caboose. He pooped again this evening (after one false alarm) and earned a yellow train named stephen and a flatbed car. So he is building his Thomas the train set one poop at a time.
So, it's official. The Battles Family is diaper free. I've been giving away pampers as party favors whenever anyone with a toddler comes near our house. The UPS guy is probably in withdrawal from his monthly diaper deliveries to our house. It is yet another big big stage behind us. It was a long time coming though. Jack sure did drag it out . . . stay tuned for the move out of the crib as you'll see there is a theme here.
