Potty Training

When Dexter was fast approaching his third birthday and still not potty trained, me & daddy were a little worried. It seemed that everyone around us with kids of a similar age had already got over that hurdle and Dexter just wasn't interested. I know, I know... all kids develop at their own rate, but it's hard not to think 'is there anything we can do to encourage this?' so we tried a few things to get the ball rolling but after all the failed attempts we gave up and eventually learned that kids potty train when they are ready and not before. A week before his third birthday, he took his nappy off and told us he didn't need them anymore and that was that. No fuss. No struggle.

Fast forward a couple years and with your third birthday slowly approaching, you'd think we wouldn't have any reason to doubt that you master this. But as a parent, you still assume stupid stuff - even the second time around. We figured that Dexter was quite late in potty training and that actually being the younger child, having a sibling to copy from, being encouraged at nursery, being so grown up for your age... well, we thought you would do it so much sooner.

We were wrong!

We knew you could, you just didn't want to. And Rayna only does what Rayna wants, when Rayna wants to :)

Your third birthday came & went. Not even a hint of you showing interest. Well, not at home anyway. We had been told on a few occasions by nursery that you had been making progress there but you wouldn't for us. The potty we'd had lying around for about 12 months was mostly used for hiding toys in.

So Easter came around and I had 4 days at home for us to have a really good try. Out came your big girl pants, your stickers & reward chart. I was really hopeful. I shouldn't have been. It wasn't that we had 'accidents', it was more that you just refused to show even the slightest bit of effort. After two very unsuccessful days, I gave up. You didn't want to and you weren't going to.

However, nursery continued to tell us more and more how well you were doing there and around came the next bank holiday weekend with 3 more days for another attempt. It couldn't harm to try. So once again, out came all the big girl pants and stickers and reward chart.

And guess what.... no accidents! Three days & NO ACCIDENTS!

The Tuesday that you went back to nursery you were learning to deal with distractions and that day you came home with 3 wet pairs of pants.

On Wednesday you came home with 2 wet pairs of pants.

On Thursday you came home with 1 wet pair of pants.

On Friday... you came home in the same pants you went to school in.

I was so proud of you.