Potty post

I've heard many different stories about potty training (aka toilet learning), from the 14 month-olds who do it by themselves overnight to the 5 year-olds who are still battling after years of struggles. I thought to be fair I should contribute our experiences, but I am not going to go on and on about this. The next post on this topic will be when we are done - be it in months or years.

So, at the first signs of readiness I jumped in with some reinforcing incentives, but things quickly fell apart as one boy was simply not physiologically capable of doing what his brother could do, nor was he psychologically capable of understanding why his brother was getting ANYTHING (treat, sticker, praise) that he was incapable of earning. So we compromised with relaxed encouragement, and while they obviously understand what goes where and have shown they can do it, they have not been much interested in doing so.

I wonder how much my own feelings have to do with things. I mean, this is it, the last stage of babyhood. Once they are toilet trained they will be 100% little boys. We probably won't have any more babies of our own to diaper (our "daycare babies" will continue for a few years, no need for anyone to volunteer babies in diapers for us to change).

This was all a few months ago, and we since decided to try this strategy. We've been telling the boys for weeks that they will stop wearing diapers "when it gets warm out", and we are going to start the next step over the four day Easter weekend - but if it doesn't work it doesn't work.

Yesterday the boys picked out their own "potties" for the second bathroom. Vanh chose a trainer and we tried to get Max to pick something simple but he could not be distracted from the deluxe Cars model with real engine sounds. They have certainly been enjoying trying them out so far - and with some success too I might add!

You go boys!