The Potty Training of Mattimeo (official potty trained 33 months)

When Meo was 18 months old, he was already a great communicator verbally and quite coordinate physically, so we decided to start thinking about potty training. We decided that we wanted to potty "training" to happen in the most natural way possible, without any pressure from us. When we moved into our new house, we had toilet seat installed that also included little people seats so that our children would be comfortable on the toilets as well. We also bought wooden stools for them to climb up and down to the potty and sinks with ease. But was either scared or intimidated of sitting on the big potty, so we got him is very own small one to try out.

When we first got it, he was quite enthusiastic about sitting on his potty. Most of the time he had clothes on and thought it was so fun. A couple times we got him to sit with no diaper on, but he quickly decided he didn't like doing this. In fact, he decided he didn't like potties at all, and stopped sitting on it all together for several months. We didn't try to force him back on until he was ready.

 

Since Meo loves to read so much, we decided to get him a book about potties to help him get comfortable with the idea. His first book was Potty by Leslie Patricelli. This rapidly became his favorite book and he wanted us to read it over and over AND OVER AND OVER. Which we did. The concept of the book is very simple, there is just a little baby thinking about peeing in a potty but he's a little nervous. Eventually he sits for a very long time and he feels something. In the end, the book says "Tinkle, tinkle, toot, I did it! Hooray! Undies!!". Meo had the entire book memorized, but these last lines were his favorite and he would recite them everywhere; in the car, at the park, in the grocery store. Everyone must have thought our family was really excited about undies.

Although Meo really loved his potty book, he still didn't love his potty. At 25 months (7 months after we bought the potty), we decided to move the potty out of the bathroom into his room where he could grow more comfortable around it. Soon it became part of his nighttime routine to, after his bath when he normally has naked time, sit on his potty and play "sorting cups". He had these stones and gems and glasses that he enjoyed sorting by type and color, but he only would play it while sitting on the potty. He didn't normally go pee on it, just sat on it. But he did get more comfortable.

And sometimes he did pee a little.

When he was 25 months he was naked from the top down during breakfast and had to poop. He started to poop on the floor, but I picked him up and put him on his potty. Then tiniest of poops fell in. He was SOO excited about it. But I also think he was scared and didn't finish his poop. I thought maybe this was the start of something, but he quickly lost interest and didn't even want to play sorting cups on his potty anymore. If we asked him to sit on his potty he would get upset, so we just let it be. He obviously wasn't ready.

They say that when your child is ready for potty training, it will happen quickly and easily. Well we certainly found that to be the case. When Meo was 27 months old, it really happened. Meo had been starting to get a little bit of diaper rash. No matter how many times a day I changed him, his skin just seemed irritated at the slightest bit of wetness, which was making Meo feel sensitive and irritated and fuss when his diaper was wet. I explained to him that his skin didn't like being wet with pee, and neither did he, that's why he asked me to change his diaper all the time. I told him that if he went pee in the potty instead of his diaper, it would help his skin and he wouldn't ever have to feel wet again. I was getting pretty irritated with the whole situation myself. Well, one morning I decided not to put a diaper on him so that his poor skin could breath. We went downstairs to make breakfast and soon Meo was fussing, "I need my diaper! I have to go pee!". I looked at Robbie and said "If he has enough control to hold his pee and ASK for a diaper, I think he can use a potty." So we brought the potty down, and without much of a thought he sat down on it and went pee. He was soooo happy and proud!

In fact he was so excited about peeing in the potty, that he kept doing it over and over. He went pee four times in the next hour. I knew this was for real this time. So after breakfast, we all drove to the store so I could pick up some potty training things for Meo. We got him a triceratops for doing such a great job all morning.

He was obsessed with Lightnight MqQueen and Tow Mater from Cars at this time, so we decided to get some Cars themed potty stuff to help motivate him. So we got him Cars undies,

A Cars potty seat (which he preferred over the one attached to the potty, but he still preferred the little potty),

And I made him a poster where he could put Cars stickers on it whenever he went pee or poop.

We also got him some cloth trainers. These have the feel and comfort of underwear, but have a waterproof liner that will catch some accidents if necessary. We thought these would be good when we went out of the house all day and were in the car a lot. These turned out to be more just for our state of mind as he has never actually peed in them.

Potty training went great. We really didn't have to do very much, We just let him be naked and had a potty upstairs and downstairs so he could go pee when he needed to go.

I wanted just to keep things normal for him, so I went to our normal scheduled  play date at the bounce zone. I was a bit terrified because it was our first time out and I had newborn baby Link to take care of. Right after our hour and a half of being in the car, I took Meo into the bathroom to go potty. I brought his Cars Potty seat and some antibacterial wipes to clean it up afterwards, and Meo sat down on it like a champ (I was surprised because he preferred his little potty. However, the very loud automatic flusher kept going off and sufficiently scared him out of peeing. I was so worried he was going to pee his pants. I made him go back in the bathroom two more times while we were there, but he would not sit on the potty. So I took him home. He held his pee until we got home then peed into his potty. I was proud, but also a little worried about him holding his pee for so long! I decided we would just stay home for a few days until he was really comfortable.

Unfortunately, he did not poop that day. He had been pooping on the potty for three days in a row, but on that day he did not poop and that led to trouble. The next day when he wanted to go poop, it hurt to come out because he had been holding it in for so long that it got hard. Every time he tried, he cried. Eventually I put a diaper on him and held him while he pooped and cried. I felt so bad for him but all I could do was hold him and told him he would feel better when it was over. From that day forward, he did not want to poop on his potty. He would pee no problem, but never poop. We decided to get a bunch of potty books to read to him, three specifically about pooping in order to help him over his fear.

Then I stayed home with him for the rest of the week. He was naked for several days and we read lots of potty books. At first, he sat down on the potty for long periods of time and read books over and over before any pee would come out. We spent a lot of time on the potty. He would even want to read potty books when he wasn't on the potty.

Every time he went pee, he got to put a sticker on his poster and he was always very excited about this. He would often point to his poster at dinner time and proudly say, "LOOK AT ALL THOSE STICKERS!" It was nice for him to have something to show for his hard work.

Meo was also really getting into playing pretend, and I had been wanting to get him some little figures he could pretend with. Since he was really into farm animals, I thought it was a good idea to get him a barn and give him little animals as rewards for making progress in potty training so that we wouldn't plateau.

My mom got him a tractor tipping set as a reward for his good work as well. Meo was obsessed with the tractor tipping segment of Cars and was having us tell him that story every night before bed. In fact, he could tell us that story by heart. So he was very excited about this gift.

Meo's bad experience peeing in public that first time not only led to a fear of pooping, but also to a fear of peeing on public potties. After trying to get him to pee on the potty at my parents house for over an hour when he had to go so bad that he was in tears and dancing around, I had the idea to offer him a cup to pee in. Immediately he peed and nearly filled a cup, and  then he happily poured it into the potty. From then on, instead of carrying a potty seat in my back pack, I started carrying a solo cup in a ziplock bag for him to pee in. Honestly, the whole cup thing has made life a lot easier (and more sanitary really).

At home though, he was peeing like a pro. I never had to bug him about peeing and he enjoyed sitting on the potty. He was wearing underwear and never having accidents. After about three days of being in underwear in fact, we decided to have him nap in underwear since his diaper was always dry when he woke up. He never had any accidents. After two days of napping in underwear and having dry nights, we decided to have him sleep all night in underwear. Its been a couple months and he has only had an accident once...and that was because Robbie forgot to have him pee before bed and gave him a huge glass of water.

Meo actually hasn't had any accidents since he started being potty trained a couple months ago, until this week. He accidentally peed in his pants, but that was because I didn't realize he hadn't peed since he woke up that morning and didn't bug him to pee before he started playing at Le Leche League (he is now going through a phase where he pretends he doesn't have to pee even though he clearly has to because he doesn't want to stop playing). So only two accidents TOTAL since the beginning of potty training over two months ago. That's pretty incredible I think. AND he has been sleeping in underwear all the while. Meo is amazing.

He will also sometimes practice peeing into the big potty, but he prefers his little potty still.

And his poster filled right up.

Now that's great about all the peeing, but what about the pooping? Well that was a different story. Meo did not want to poop on the potty again after that tragic day of the painful poop. But he didn't need diapers any more because he was potty trained. So what did I do? When he had to poop, he asked to put on a diaper. In fact, he would go upstairs and get a diaper himself so I could put it on him. Then he would poop and I would take it off and put him back in undies. This went on for a couple weeks and I was worried he would plateau and want to poop into diapers forever. To help him move forward, I guided him in a few simple steps. As he mastered one step, I introduced the next step.

Step 1. He asked to poop in his diaper so we would put a diaper on but then he had to stand in the bathroom to poop.

Step 2. When he pooped in his diaper, he had to help me dump the poop into the potty.

Step 3. He pooped in his diaper but needed to stand near/over his potty while he pooped and put his poop in the potty after.

Step 4. He could poop in his diaper, but he needed to sit on the potty while he did it.

Step four happened while Robbie was in Iowa and I was alone with boy boys for a week. I had trying to convince him to sit on the potty while he pooped in his diaper but it still made him nervous. Then one day, he yelled for me while he was pooping and I came in and he was sitting on the potty pooping with his diaper on. He was so happy! A couple hours later he said he had to poop again, but this time he said he didn't want a diaper and went to poop on the potty all by himself! I was a little in shock, and we were both so excited.

 

I was worried it was just a fluke, but then in the morning right when he woke up he told me he had to go poop and sure enough he ran into the potty and went poop and pee. And ever since then, he has been completely potty trained; he poops and pees in his potty every time and there are no more diapers for Mr. Meo. So while he was essentially potty trained at 27 months (peeing and wearing underwear except to poop) it was at 33 months that Meo was completely and officially potty trained.

And through this potty training process, he earned a lot of pretty awesome farm animals. He loves to play with these; he has the best imagination.

 Looking back, I'm not sure we really needed to give him animals as rewards. Back in the time when he was still pooping in a diaper, I tried to bribe him to poop with animals. His mantra became "if I go poop on the potty, I can get a mama goat and a baby goat!". But even though he walked around saying this, it didn't actually get him to poop. The only way I got him to poop was by using the steps I outlined above. In the end, potty training was just an excuse to get him something I really wanted him to have.

We are really proud of Meo, and are grateful that we now only have one set of diapers to clean instead of two. Great job Meo!