Look at that cute little underwear boy helping to decorate the Christmas tree! There is nothing cuter than a 3-year-old in underwear.So how did we work it? We started on a Sunday afternoon after church (the day of the picture taken above). I told him he was done with diapers and he was going to wear underwear now. He gave no argument. The first 2 days I gave him 3 M&Ms for every time he sat on the potty. I set my timer to go off every 30 minutes and had him sit on the potty and try. After 2 days he was getting tired of that routine and so was I. Plus, I could tell that he had fully accepting this potty thing, he just needed to "own" it and figure out for himself when to go.
So I introduced this sticker chart. He got a sticker every time he went potty and kept his underwear dry. I thought he'd fill the chart in 3 days, but it ended up taking 5. Five rip-my-hair-out days. It seemed like Austin announced his need to go potty 1 second before it came out of his body. We changed a lot of underwear and spot cleaned a lot of carpet. Obviously, we didn't go anywhere that week. I suppose I could have used pull-ups, but I wanted to get this over with, no handicaps. Finally, on day 7, I had a heart-to-heart with him and asked him if he was trying or if it was just hard. He sincerely told me that he was trying and that it was hard. He was cute. And I decided to have more patience. But, joyously, we woke up the next morning and bang! he'd figured it out. He went dry that day and many a day since!This was Austin's prize for
filling up the sticker chart. For the first 3 days he asked every time he went potty if he could play with his "surprise" now. It was so hard for me to hold out and not give it to him but I wanted him to have a reason to keep trying. It turned out to be just right actually. When he finally earned this, he was so happy! He played with this toy for a solid straight week.Looking back, the potty training actually went fast, but that one week was excruciatingly frustrating. He only had one poop on the floor incident (phew) which I made him clean up - and I'm pretty sure that convinced him to never do that again. Now he's doing great. We still get wet underwear about once every other day, but he knows how to get himself cleaned up so I'm feeling patient with it. Last week we did another sticker chart to practice wiping himself (that's so nice!). The only big thing left is night-time training and I'm not sure when I'm going to tackle that.
I'm so happy the hardest part is over. He seems so much older and more responsible now. It's definitely changed the way I perceive him and what I expect of him. My little man is truly growing up. And he's at that magical age where he couldn't be prouder.
