Well, today is P-Day at the Muller home. I’m trying to take advantage of my mom’s visit to potty train Tommy! He’s been using the potty 6-8 times a day, waking up from naps or overnight with a dry diaper (and telling us he needs to go), or telling me immediately after he wets his diaper. So today we pulled out the big boy underwear for Tommy and his doll Eddie, and we’re spending the day at home so that they can learn to use the potty together.
I read a book about potty training your child in just one day, but it wasn’t all that helpful. Basically it spent more time telling me how spanking is abusive and leads to a life of criminal misbehavior than actually giving me any advice I didn’t already know. So I’m kindof winging it, with help from my mom. We put Tommy and Eddie in big boy underwear first thing and have been giving them apple juice, milk, melon, and popsicles. I told him he’d get a reward every time he went on the potty or had dry underpants when I checked. At first, Tommy was really excited to earn his rewards (watching a Mike Mulligan movie from the library, an M&M, car sticker, or 4 bunny grahams), but he had six accidents in three hours. And he didn’t seem to care that he was wet. We started asking him to go every 5 minutes instead of every 10 and bumped up the rewards. Cheese sticks and craisins entered the mix, and I put them out in muffin cups so he could look at them and select one. He went two hours without any accidents, and he’s now in a pull-up for his nap. I’ll post an update this evening with how successful his afternoon was…
Also (and this is relevant), Eddie is the Cabbage Patch doll my aunt gave me when I was born. He’s actually Derek Edmund, but apparently I didn’t want another Derek around the house. Nothin’ like a child of the early 80s.