Monday, November 7, 2011

Potty Training Pitfalls

We are several months into potty training Katie. I would say that she is 75% trained at this point. Unfortunately, the 25% that is not complete seems to be the most difficult and keeps her from getting to 100%.

She is wearing underwear all day and pees on the potty regularly. She even wears underwear for naps and wakes up dry about 60% of the time. For a while, she wanted to wear underwear to bed at night but she was waking up wet almost every night, multiple times a night. So we went back to pullups for now.

The main obstacle seems to be using the potty for #2. For whatever reason, she does not want to do that on there. If you catch her in the act and take her to the bathroom, she will stop and wait until you are busy doing something else. I have actually followed her around for more than one day and the minute that I leave her alone, that's when it happens. To be honest, I am tired of changing dirty underwear. Every 10 times or so, I want to throw the towel in. Of course, I can't bear to do this after all of the work that we have put in.

I keep hoping that one day things will just click and that's all it will take. I have tried giving candy, telling her she can go to the store to get something she picks out but it doesn't work. Now that we have been at this for a while, I wonder if it was too early to start. One day I will look back and wonder why it seemed so hard. I know she will get it before she heads off to kindergarten (I hope it doesn't take that long).

5 comments:

LauraC said...

We had the same issue with Alex, pooping in underwear. At day care, they really hammered it home that it was BAD to do that, and he stopped doing it. But it was still months before he would poop in the potty. I think the worst is all the assvice you get from people who are telling you that you are doing it wrong!

Beth said...

Agree with Laura. Assvice sucks. William wasn't pooped trained for several months after he was pee trained. I told him pooping in his underwear was messy and gross, and if he needed to poop and didn't want to use the potty, I'd give him a pull-up. Definitely made it easier for me! He still had accidents occasionally, but he finally got over it. Katie will too!

Carrie said...

I'd just hang in there. Autumn was giving us the same problem. It'll happen. It just takes time (and a lot of patience). I don't know what else to tell you :(

Amy said...

It sounds like this is very common. Kloden is the same way, except he isnt wearing underwear on a regular basis. He pees on the potty, no problem but will not poo. My SIL had this same exact issue with my oldest nephew. Now, this isn't advice because I'm not even sure I would do this and this isn't even a personal experience for me, but what she did was put him in the tub and rinse his bottom off with cold water everytime he would poo in his underwear. It took 1-2 days of this and he was cured.

Mel said...

Sticker charts have worked for us. It also seems like Katie is a private popper. Maybe if you can get her on the potty and kind of close the door and give her some privacy. Mariele loves looking at books while she poops. We keep some picture books in the bathroom drawers just for that reason. Yep, poop accidents suck!!! Lucky for me, Mariele has more pee accidents than poop accidents, but the few poop ones she has had, I just bagged up the panties and took them straight out to the trash.