Potty Training: The Thrills and Spills

Potty Training has not been a happy event in our household.  I started trying to Potty Train Emma last September.  She was showing all the signs, and we had a small success the first day, but when we got to day two, everything fell apart.  Emma did not like having a part of her go in the potty.  On day one, everything was fine, and we had a fun little party to celebrate, but on day two, it was not okay.  When she started to go, she stopped herself and had a major melt down.  Also, by stopping herself, she ended up having another accident, which just added to the agony.  After a long morning of this trauma, I decided that Emma was not emotionally ready for potty training, even if she had all the signs.

Move forward four months, and we try again.  All the holiday fuss was over, and January was a good month for goals.  I got everything prepared, and Emma was excited by her new underwear, but not by the potty. She would sit on it, but would refuse to go.  Then she would have an accident, stop herself from going, and after I cleaned her up, have another.  She was so unhappy that after this happened twice, I decided to put her back in a diaper.  This ended up a good thing, because she had the flu for the next several days, and we really needed that diaper!

After our distressing experience in January, I decided to just have Emma sit on the potty in the mornings, evenings and with bath time.  This did not work well at all!  After being so upset in January, our little girl refused to even sit on the potty chair.  She would look at it, and start crying.  If I tried to sit her down on it, she would fight me.  Every morning for several months we had the same conversation:

Mama: Emma, you want to sit on the potty?
Emma: Maybe tomorrow!

Well, tomorrow never came with her!

So, last month I decided that maybe we needed to get the converter seat for the toilet and not use the potty chair.  It is a pretty potty seat with the Disney Princesses.  Emma was excited by it, and willing to sit on the toilet.  So last week, I decided that we would have an underwear day and work on potty training.  When I put Emma in underwear, she threw a fit, took them off, and brought me a diaper, pants and shirt and demanded that I get her dressed.  After 20 minutes of this, we decided that we would  just work on sitting on the toilet every day and practice.

So, with all this drama over using the potty, imaging my surprise when yesterday Emma informs me she wants to use the potty. And she wanted to sit on her potty chair, not the toilet.  So we hurried in, removed her clean, dry diaper and sat down.  Within a few minutes, she was peeing!  We were so excited.  We sang, we danced, we rejoiced.  My little girl was doing it on her own.  I decided then and there to let her make her own time frame for this, and go by her needs.  So I wasn't surprised that we did not repeat that night. Or this morning.  But we were delighted that this afternoon she repeated the performance. We were finger painting, and all she had on was her diaper.  When she stood up and started doing the potty dance and telling me to hurry, we ran in and got her down.  We had another party, and told her she is getting to be such a big girl.

I am amazed and awed that after so many months of struggling with her, she is now potty training herself.  I have hopes that by the time we go on vacation next October that she will be ready to go without diapers.  I still might use pull ups for the car trip and the days in the parks as it will be so exciting, but we are on our way to getting rid of the diaper pail!  Yeah!