Potty School

This morning, C and I spent 6 hours in "potty school."  Our previous attempts at potty training had been unsuccessful.  C had learned how to potty on the toilet, but motivating him to do so proved to be extremely difficult.  He was unimpressed by sticker charts and candy and always replied with a polite "no thank you" when I asked him if he needed to go potty.  I have always believed in waiting until the child is ready to be trained...fully trained.  Who cares if your 18 month old pees in the pot if you have to carry her in there every 30 minutes?!?  I wanted to potty-train C...not myself!  A friend of mine suggested the book, Toilet Training In Less Than A Day.  For those of you out there saying, "There's a load of bull and $7.99 you'll never get back."  One, the book does not guarantee a child who is 100% accident free in less than a day.  Rather, the concept is solidified in a short amount of time and the "accident free" part follows within a week or two (or so they say...we're not that far yet!)  And two, I checked it out from the library so I didn't waste any money!  The book was written by two psychologists and uses several different techniques to teach a child to potty themselves.  I wanted to try it just because of that right there!  Since I knew C understood the concept of going potty I especially liked the idea of teaching natural consequences.  I would never punish my child for having an accident, but doing things like having C practice going to and from the potty quickly following an accident, and having him help clean up the mess and change himself into clean pants really made a lot of sense to me.  These were just things that needed to be done following an accident and it made total sense to transfer the responsibility from the parent to the child.  My son may not potty in the toilet for an m&m, but he sure doesn't appreciate having to do all that work after an accident.  I knew that would probably be our golden ticket right there...we had been unable to motivate him to go in the potty...but here was a way to motivate him not to go in his pants. 

Did it work?  I guess I'll let you know in a couple of weeks.  Did it start us off on the right foot?  After watching C go to the bathroom without being asked/reminded/prompted etc., move his step stool to the toilet, lift the seat, pull his undies down, pee, pull his undies up, replace the seat, flush, move his stool to the sink and wash and dry his hands....all without any physical assistance or verbal reminders from me...one of those times being after I had already tucked him in for his nap and left him in his bedroom...then yes, I'd say it did! 

And the fact that we had quite a bit of fun together didn't hurt the book's case either.  Proof of which came in the form of C's question as he was washing his hands. "Can I go to potty school again?"  Yeah, you can if you want to buddy...but I don't think you'll need to.