Potty Training 101

Philip has signed up for Potty Training 101 and he's doing a better good job. Although he has managed to figure out to cheat a little. As I've mentioned in previous posts, we were letting him run around with only a shirt on after changing his diaper and asking that he stay dry. He does really well at staying dry these days and is actually coming to tell me when he needs to potty after being without a diaper for some time. We run back to his bathroom and he sits on his little potty. It usually doesn't take long, a big smile comes across him face and he stands up to show me the pee-pee in his potty. I then lift the toilet lid so he can dump his little pot into it. I must have told him to be careful the first few times because now EVERY time he is dumping the pot, he does move in slow motion and whispers, "Careful, careful" to himself. It's really cute.

Well, Matthew and I became really excited when Friday evening before dinner, Philip came running into the kitchen saying, "Potty!" I walked with him to the bathroom thinking he had to go and was surprised to see pee-pee already in his little potty. He went all by himself! After he saw that I saw what he had done, he began saying, "Prize!" In this training process, we decided going pee-pee in the potty deserved two chocolate chips. He was given his prize and told to play until dinner. Not 5 minutes later, Philip runs up the hall again saying, "Prize!" Yes, he had used the potty again so I gave him 2 more chocolate chips. What do you know, 5 minutes after that he was asking for the same thing! That little stinker got 6 chocolate chips within 30 minutes. Matthew and I knew Philip was scamming the system, but we wanted to keep the reward system up thinking it was motivating. We proceeded to begin eating dinner when Philip asked to go potty. Matthew said no and asked him to hold it until after dinner was over. Matthew said he thought that was reasonable as Philip had just gone pee-pee 3 times and it definitely wasn't an emergency.

More excitement came as we headed to Sam's Club after dinner. Philip asked to go potty in the middle of the store. I told him to hold it as I carried him to the bathroom. We got to the Women's Room, into the stall and sat him on the toilet. He went pee-pee! The toilet automatically flushed behind him as I was getting him situated but it didn't scare him too much. He kept going after it quieted down. We joined Matthew in the store and told him the good news. However, 10 minutes later Philip said he needed to potty again. Same thing: went to the bathroom, sat him on the toilet and he pee'd. It was a great accomplishment in my mind, but we're just trying to figure out how to get him to let all of the urine out at one time so we won't have these repeat potty runs.

So far he hasn't asked to go potty for poopy and would rather just do it in his diaper. We're considering what our next step should be. Pull-ups? Going straight for underpants? Continuing with the hit or miss pottying until Baby Sister is born (some people say an older child might regress with the changing circumstances)? Overall, Philip is showing great improvement. Other than trying to sit on the potty as a chance for "prize" or as a stall tactic before naptime, I am very happy that he has no problem willingly sitting on the potty.

I'll keep you updated.