Friday 19 August 2011

Potty training: We've decided to 'go for it'....

As  it's the summer holidays our social diary has been pretty free this week, with none of our regular toddler groups running. I thought I'd take the opportunity to spend the majority of the week at home with Eden and concentrate a bit more on potty training. She's 20 months now and has been showing signs of being 'ready' for a good 3 months, I'm sure part of this is to do with her being in cloth nappies. In that time we've had lots of nappy-free evenings at home where she's successfully used her potty, taking her lead and just going at her pace. This week I've taken it a step further and left her nappy-free (with just a t-shirt on) all day at home.

Since the beginning of the week, Eden's made her own way over to the potty when she's already started 'going' realising that's what the potty's there for. As a result we've only had a couple of full accidents all week, although we've had plenty of trickles on the floor before she's made it to her potty. She likes our little routine that we have, of taking her potty to the loo to empty, flushing the loo afterwards and washing her hands (she loves that bit), so this has kind of been a reward in itself to her using her potty and has worked well. However, until today we hadn't progressed any further with her getting to the potty in time before starting, or with her telling me she needs to go (although she quite good telling me about poos).

I was confident that with an extra incentive we could get her weeing on her potty without any accidents, so this afternoon I bought her some chocolate buttons, and they've worked a treat (for a little girl who never has chocolate she thinks this is amazing)! Since introducing the chocolate buttons as a reward (this is different to a bribe) she's cracked it, and has done 4 wees and a poo with absolutely no accidents on the floor. She's also wee'd when I've asked her to on the potty, something she wasn't doing previously even if she needed to go.

So we appear to have taken the plunge, and made enough progress this week to be considering not going back into nappies in the day. I've got the trainer pants out, and her big girl's pants, the next step is to introduce these, and she has her 'My Carry Potty' travel potty ready for out and about.

2 comments:

Vanessa (Housewives Inc) said...

Good luck with the potty training!! I found that in the early days we'd have good days and then seem to 'forget'... now we're almost 3 months in and doing very well. Little Moo actually hasn't wanted to sit on the potty for ages now - preferring to sit on the proper loo :-) Aaahh they grow up so fast, x

Ponderings from the Kitchen said...

Thanks Vanessa, we're on week 2 now - she did well enough last week for us to take the decision to keep going this week with it. Glad to hear your little girl is getting on well too! :)