Life has been so busy for us and so crazy lately. I have about 30 projects in my head I want to write about but I have had so much going on lately I haven't gotten to it. Do you ever get to the point where you have so much to do you just feel like you don't get anything done because it's all so overwhelming? Ugh... I'm there.
Anyway, we are having more success with potty training. A few tricks we've learned that might help any future potty training parents:
Don't let your child tell you they don't want to go to the bathroom. It's not an option. Even if they don't go, they need to sit there. Eventually one of the times they sit there, they will go.
Stick with it. I called my husband after the first four hours or so wanting to quit. It's so much effort (especially with a younger one around who still needs lots of my energy). But keep going and don't quit. You will make progress. I think this is where we have gone wrong in the past. I made zero progress the first day. None. Day two was a little better and today was a little better than that. Hopefully we're getting somewhere.
One of my students (yes, I was attempting potty training with this same child even back then...) told me one time to not bother buying pull-ups. We have agreed with this advice for a few reasons. First, they are so much like a diaper that my kid just used them like a diaper. Second, for cost reasons, they are expensive as far as diapers go. Third, I wanted her to learn what it felt like to be wet and to not want to be wet anymore. Pull-ups are just so much like diapers that the few times we tried them she just didn't have a problem using them as diapers and as a result, they were just a waste of money.
We resorted to rewarding with candy (I never wanted to be one of those parents who rewarded their kid with food. I'm just imagining all the eating issues my kids are going to have in the future). The star sticker chart just wasn't that effective so we had to do something. And well... the candy is working.
Just as a parenting tip- make sure you have LOTS of clean underwear for your child to change into. You're going to need them.
I have heard you can potty train a baby as young as 18 months. My 11 month old is going to start this process early (not now... at 18 months)- especially since she has been walking since she was 9 months old. I'm hoping she will be far enough along developmentally at 18 months to learn the process early!
As far as cloth diapers on my eleven month old goes, it's working out great so far. I didn't mind them too much when I used them the first time around but I think I forgot why I liked them and had used them for so long. We use BumGenius and Fuzzi Bunz brand cloth diapers so they are very parent friendly. Both my kids wear a size 4 disposable diaper and they cost between 15-25 cents a diaper on Amazon (I haven't calculated out the price for them in a store for awhile). I'm realizing how much money we are saving by going back to our old cloth diapers. Usually between 4-8 diapers per kid per day times 20 cents per diaper results in a few dollars a day in savings. That's a lot of money for us right now. We didn't even have to buy special detergent since we still had the stuff around from cloth diapering earlier.
Anyway, sorry for the long potty training posts. I've read a ton about potty training and when I was teaching I had talked to several of my students about how they potty trained their kids (I had lots of parents in my classes). I got some great advice from people and hopefully some of this advice along with my own crazy experience will help others who are venturing out into the world of potty training.
I promise to have some fun activity posts coming this week! I have some fun ones I am getting prepared.
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