Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Potty Training

What was I thinking? This is a horrible idea. It's a wonder we're not all still in Pampers, because this is seriously the worst parenting day of my life.

I have faithfully taken MG to "go potty" (read: sit on the throne and make faces at herself in the mirror) every 10 - 13 minutes all day long since I got the panties on her around 10:30 am when we got dressed. She has gone through five pairs of pants. Sometimes she'd have an accident 30 seconds before the timer went off (the "it's been 10 minutes, let's go sit on the potty," timer, that I stopped setting 1 minute later after the first accident - so we were at 13 minutes for the rest of the day). Sometimes she'd wet herself just a minute or two after we came back from sitting on the potty for 10 minutes making faces. I put a diaper on her for nap. We got up at 3:30, and I changed her back into panties. We tried the upstairs potty (trauma). We came downstairs, I set the timer for 13 minutes, and at t minus 30 seconds, she had an accident.

Seriously.

In spite of this, exactly 1/2 tsp. of actual urine made it into the actual potty today. It was greeted with much fanfare.

She doesn't like the sensation of being wet in the panties. She tells me right away when she has an accident. Then we go sit on the potty while I clean her up, throw the clothes in the washer, and get a new outfit. Then she pees herself again 12 and a half minutes later...

But when I take her every 10 minutes, she just sits there for as long as I let her, and then pees at 9 minutes, 30 seconds.

I'm trying so hard to keep it positive, to not make it a big deal, but after the 5th accident of the day, my patience is wearing a little thin. She's running out of weather-appropriate clothes. I'm running out of hair to pull out.

To quote her, "I'm all finished done." I give up. She's not ready. Forcing her is stupid. Maybe Santa will bring her a trip to Potty Training Bootcamp for Christmas.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My son potty trained early-ish. Starting at around 18.5 months... Now at 2.5 he's totally potty trained (except at night there are rare accidents.)

I didn't ever do the timer/potty thing. Instead I would ask if he needed to go--and rewarded him for going... Also invited him into the bathroom any time I or DH was going.

He pees no where near every 12 minutes... He usually only goes every 2-3 hours. Maybe if you lay off a little bit and just have the potty out there in your midst, and praise her for going she'll stop having so many accidents. It sounds like she's really anxious. Probably because there is so much pressure on here