Sunday 12 August 2007

Wearing pants on your head is fun.

Sorry to be so obsessed with potty training but a it seems quite a big deal at the moment. We are so pleased with our youngest's progress. When we started to try a month or so ago we had high hopes.

It all started with a trip to the shop to by him some pants. We made a big fuss of him and he was really pleased. we bought loads of stickers for his potty and made it look very special. He was still really pleased. He loved wearing his pants and sitting on his potty.

However he didn't do any wees or poos. Until... we went to my wife's mother's for tea. We took the potty and spare pants etc... and he suddenly needed a poo and a wee. We managed to get him to sit on the potty but there was no result. So he wandered off again. A short time later the urge came on him again and he ended up sitting on the potty in the middle of the living room. He did a huge long poo. This scared him a great deal. In retrospect in was a very bad idea to have the potty in such a public place. Once he had stopped shaking we praised him and encouraged him, but he was not going to be won over that easily.

From that point on he refused to sit on the potty at all. So my wife decided that the best thing to do was to leave it a few weeks. So we did.

We then decided to try again. We stocked up on pants and stopped buying so many nappies and commenced battle. For the first few days even wearing pants was not a popular move. We could put then on him but then we would suddenly find him without any and find the offending garments shoved in the washing machine. Gradually we won him over by making pants fun. Our eldest and I formed the "wearing pants on your head is fun club". He started wearing pants but wouldn't go in the potty. He would either not go all day until he went to bed for his afternoon nap in his nappy and let it all out at once or go on the floor or sofa or anywhere not waterproof.

Then we went on holiday and started the "if you do a wee on the potty you will get a sweet incentive scheme". He quickly got the hang of the whole thing after that, often pretending to do wees in an attempt to get extra sweets (to no avail). Poos came a few days later. He is still a bit confused about the difference between poos and wees - often trying many times to go on the potty with no result before the poo arrives. Hopefully now we are back from holiday and doing more things he will not lose the skill but we are fairly confident that he has got the idea.

Now the only problem is how to wean him off the sweets before he gets obese and his teeth fall out.

Proud member of the "wearing pants on your head is fun club":

If you would like to join please send a picture of yourself wearing pants on your head and having fun.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great idea dad. xxx