Sunday, July 22, 2012

Potty Training

I will admit, I had gotten a little lazy with Bryson's potty training. He started using the potty a while ago but I hadn't been pushing it like I should have. A few weeks ago, I decided that I was going to potty train Bryson in 2 days. We have had a busy past few weeks planned with the 4th of July and Will's birthday, so I decided that last weekend we would do it. The plan was to stay home and do nothing but potty train Bryson. We would sit him every 30 minutes and only put a diaper on him for nap time and bedtime, no matter how many accidents he had. I wasn't really too sure how it would go. I was really just hoping that it would get him more interested in the potty and that I would have to put him back in a diaper on Monday and just make sure that I sat him on the potty more often then I had been. Well, he did better than I expected and I am proud to say that Bryson is completely potty trained! (except for nap and bedtime). I highly recommend potty training like this to anybody.
Here's what we did. We made sure we had nothing to do and told everybody that if they wanted to see Bryson, they would have to come to us. We bought his favorite snack (Combo's) as a reward, and M&M's as bribery to get him to sit on the potty (since I didn't think he would be too happy about sitting every 30 minutes). Right when he woke up, I sat him on the potty and let him choose out what underwear he wanted to wear. (We didn't use a little potty. For some reason he doesn't seem to fit on those very good, so we just let him straddle the big potty).  Then 30 minutes later, I sat him again. He was doing pretty good for the first few hours, then he had his first accident. Since he had an accident, I wouldn't let him choose which pair of underwear he wanted to wear and he was not happy about that. He made it until lunch without having another accident. We repeated this same thing after his nap. Once he woke from nap he had 3 accidents back to back! I was so frustrated but determined that I was not going to give up! I think he may have had a few successful trips the whole day, but nothing to get too excited about. I was not very optimistic about Sunday but I was determined I was not going to give up and that he would be potty trained by Monday.
Sunday when he woke up, I let him choose his underwear again. This time he chose his Batman underwear. I told him that if he had an accident that Batman would be sad. Not too long after I put it on him he said, "oh no! Batman is sad." He had realized he was having an accident and stopped himself. I grabbed him and let him finish in the potty. Since he had an accident, I didn't let him choose which pair of underwear he would get to wear again. Then he had 1 more accident and that was it. No more accidents. He then started grabbing himself which was his way of telling me he had to go to the potty. As soon as I saw him grab himself we would run to the potty. No more accidents!
On Monday, he stayed home with Robert and was successful again! Tuesday was his first day at school in underwear. I wasn't sure how it would go since there would be more distractions but he only had 1 accident! But it was really an accident. He told me in the gym he had to go potty and we ran as fast as we could to the potty, we just didn't make it in time. The same thing happened on Wednesday. He spent Thursday and Friday with Lisa and only had 1 accident with her which was on Thursday. But it was the same way it was at school. He just couldn't get there in time. He has now been accident free since Thursday and tells me that he has to use the potty! I'm even happy to say that he poops in the potty too! Not only that, but we went to dinner Thursday and Friday night and he told us that he had to go and he used a public potty! I am so proud of Bryson for potty training so quickly. I'm not too sure how long I will keep him in a diaper for nap and bedtime. I guess I will just play it by ear. So far he has woke up dry from nap everyday and dry every morning except for today. I highly recommend this type of potty training to anybody. Not only did it work for Bryson, but my nephew too. And just because he's so cute in underwear, here's a few pictures.