Reed is now proud to announce, “No More Diapers!” He is proud to proclaim that to anyone, and then follow up by telling everyone that, “Reed is choo-choo potty.”
Huh?
It took us a second to figure out…. Reed is potty trained!
That’s right, over the last few weeks it has been a progression of milestones with very little setbacks, and now Reed out of diapers completely.
Nothing like a little peer pressure to get the ball rolling, but in mid-Fall, Reed’s friend Caleb had made the move to underwear, and we made a big deal of it when his mom told us. From that point Reed finally wanted to try the little potty we had bought several months earlier.
We had tried a few days of underwear when we got home at night, but he always had accidents. We couldn’t get him to go sit on the potty, even if he didn’t have to go, so it was going to be up to him to make the move. Then one night after bath, he was running around butt-naked (which seems to happen regularly after bath time), and he announced he had to go potty. We got all excited and ran with him to the bathroom and had to pull the potty out for him to use. Success!! We of course made a big deal of it like you are supposed to do, and thought we had turned a corner.
We tried the next weekend with just underwear and added the reward of candy (since Halloween had just passed and we had a stockpile). He still was late in telling us and went through several pairs of underwear. We realized our best success was with him butt-naked. Why? I suppose he didn’t feel that safety net and knew he had to do something about it.
So, Thanksgiving weekend, we were home for the extended time with not much going on. We decided to let Reed run around the house naked from the waist down, and focus on going to the potty. Sure enough he started to learn the sensation and could tell us ahead of time, every time. We added underwear as reward after a period of time, and by then he figured out what was going on. He was very persistent about the candy as well.
At this point, he was in underwear all day, and would change to a diaper for naps and bed time. There were many times that he woke up dry, and only after getting up and walking around did he use his diaper. He had a few accidents at school, so we would pack a few changes of clothes for him every day.
Then the accidents seemed to stop and one weekend he gave us a hard time about putting a diaper on for his nap. We let him sleep without one, and sure enough, he woke up dry and went potty shortly after getting up. Success!! We got more persistent about going potty before getting in bed, and now after starting the whole process just weeks ago, he is sleeping through the night completely dry, and has never wet the bed.
He is still using his little potty at home, but he is not scared to sit on a regular toilet at someone else’ house, or even in a public restroom. He is pretty much independent when we are home, except if the light is off. He will make the move to a regular toilet in is his own time… as we have learned with so many other things about Reed.
-RB