Shake Shake Shake!
Mar 01 '01
The Bottom Line Find something the child really wants, and make getting it contingent on using the potty.
My two-and-a-half year old son recently decided he was ready to be potty trained. How? Well...I essentially held a carrot in front of his nose.
It all started when my friend Harriette and I were discussing potty training. She asked me, "What does Danny REALLY like? What does he want more than anything?" Being that my son is the youngest kid on the block, he is dying to go to school (let's hope he always feels this way). See, every day, he asks if he can play with the neighborhood kids and I tell him that they are at school. So, he says, "Danny go to school, too?" Therefore, I started telling him that he could go to school when he made all his poops and pee-pees on the potty.
The first time he pooped and peed on the potty, we jumped up & down, cheered, and did the "tushy dance" (don't ask, I am not demonstrating). Then, we got in the car and went to the local pre-school for a tour. He loved it. When we left, all he talked about was going back to the school. I told him, "When you make all your pee-pees and poops on the potty every day, you can go to school.
Pooping was a bit nerve wracking for him at first, so I started offering him a piece of "candy" each time he pooped on the potty ("candy" was really little bits of dehydrated fruit...helped to keep him "regular").
When he makes pee-pee on the potty he has now learned to "shake shake shake" when he is finished so that there is no drippage...just like the big guys.
We immediately switched from diapers to "big boy underwear" and went to the store so he could pick out his own. He chose baseball and Blues Clues underwear. For several days he would show his big boy underwear to anyone who was willing to see. The idea was to keep him feeling very proud of himself and his accomplishment. We opted for big boy underwear instead of training pants or pull-ups because I wanted him to know when he had accidents and feel like a big boy when he didn't. Each day that he had no accidents, we went to visit another pre-school. This gave me the chance to tour the schools and get to know the staff so that I could have an easier time choosing his school...and gave him a huge motivator.
It took all of about 3 days for Danny to become a potty pro. He still wears diapers at night and during his naps -- mainly because I don't want the hassle of middle-of-the-night potty runs just yet. But, after about a week, he started waking up dry all the time!
I think the key to potty training (at least with my child), is motivation. Danny needed a reason to use the potty...and a clean bottom wasn't reason enough for him.
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dannyzmom
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Member: Carolyn
Location: South Florida
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