My tiny tot is 17 months old now and before this I never bothered to potty
train or use nappies and clinically filled the fat pockets of big ass diaper
corporations – yeah shame on me! Well I AM a practical mom and wasn’t that the
most expected out of me? Convenience? Esp since being a new mom already meant juggling
a million things with less sleep & rest? But then I read this book: Oh Crap. Potty Training. And I read how
disposable diapers take 250-500 years to decompose and are filling our
landfills at an alarming rate. And how 1 year worth diapers = two fully grown
trees. And I fell in love with Jamie Glowacki’s passionate, frank, forth right,
and sprinkled with plenty of F words style of writing about potty training. She
has potty trained thousands of children and in this book she pours out the philosophy,
the age, the pitfalls to avoid and more than anything else she gives you the
CONFIDENCE to dive right in without looking back! You can do it AND this needs to be done!
So armed with this “manual”,
a cute “Prince of potty” book for Manav, a brand new potty, and 2 more body
parts in my tiny tot’s vocabulary (where is your penis? Where is your bum?), I
began the journey!
First and foremost, I removed any notion of it being messy. Yes, the
method calls for selecting a day and ditching the diaper once and for all
(Except for naps & sleep) and I even brought out plastic sheets to cover
the couches. But really, it wasn’t so bad. I needed a sheet, but only to
protect his naked bum from the cold floor. YES I ditched the day time diapers! And
it felt good! Not just because it was a teeny tiny miniscule way of saving the
planet (better late than never!) or the money we shall save, but because it
meant my little baby boy was officially turning into a “big boy” now! Sigh.
So here’s how day 1
began. Stripped him down and stared at his penis all day. Well we didn’t till
then know how often he really peed or what signal or body movement he made when
he wanted to go! I’d never been so penis obsessed in my life!
Jamie says the quickest & easiest age to potty train is 20-30
months, and although it’s very much
possible to train a 17 month old, it simply takes longer for him to connect the
dots. So yeah, every time we thought he was going to pee or saw him begin
to pee, we would pick him up and put him on the pot. BUT, BUT, BUT, the “connecting
the dots” was taking longer than the timeline mentioned (1-3 days? huh! He still
peed on the floor on day 4!).
But have I ever
mentioned what a cleanliness freak my boy is? He’s the type who follows the maid around when
she’s sweeping, cleaning the mirrors and dusting. WITH his own broom and
dusting cloth! And he’s obsessed with tissues! Every time something spills he
has to run to the tissue box, pull out a tissue, wipe off the floor and throw
the soiled tissue into the garbage can. So it wasn’t at all surprising or extra
amusing to watch him pee on the floor, and then run to wipe it off with
tissues.
Till day 5. (Phew! Yes! Jamie says usually its 1-3 days, but every kid
is unique in his own way – aren’t they?). Day 5 is when “I” connected the dots
in “MY” head. “The Power of Habit” book says every habit has a cue-routine-reward, which is what we
need to exploit when we’re changing a habit. Here, the cue was “wanting to pee”,
the routine was “peeing on the floor” which had to be changed to “peeing on the
potty” and the reward, ahem! The reward was where things were going wrong!
The reward for my kid was the excitement of wiping off his pee from the
floor with tissues! When that’s something he LOVED doing- why would he bother
peeing on the pot?
So I changed the reward.
The new reward was “carrying the potty with pee in it to the big pot to dispose
it off"! Worked like a charm! That distracted him from the obsession of tissues …and yeah, pretty
soon he finally “BEGAN” to point at the potty when he wanted to go. AND he
would be pretty excited to carry the potty to the toilet (toddlers!!)
Though it’s a still a long way to go and I haven’t followed the Jamie’s
method to the T, I completely recommend the book to anyone who is thinking of
beginning the process without really having a clue how to (like me!). To people
who may think you gotta be crazy to read
a whole 300 pages on potty training AND spend a whopping $15 on it: Well there
IS that much to be said about the topic! No page is unnecessary. And come to
think of It, it’s still less than only a weeks’ expense on diapers!
The potty I used is a
plain vanilla one (60,000
Indonesian Rupiah / Rs. 300/ $6). I wanted a one with a slim front and something
he could hold on to “while” sitting on it (so it doesn’t slide away). He hates
to hover for even an extra second, so no point buying one with a backrest too. The
fancy ones were too broad (to stand and pee), didn’t have anything to hold on
to while sitting so would slide away, and I really don’t know what’s the point
of having music, potty cover and esp a tissue roll holder on it! The simple the
better!
The “Prince of the
potty” book I got
for Manav is totally cute, every time I pull it out to read he excitedly points to his potty. It’s about how he’s become a big boy now and can
do his business on the potty. (Although I never read it to him WHILE he's on the pot, he isn't the kind who loves sitting on it endlessly...at least not yet!)
The process is still on. No idea how long it will take. I sure hope it’s
through BEFORE our big move to India (3 weeks from now!). Cuz then EVERYTHING
will turn topsy turvy for the little fella, new people, new friends, new house,
new weather. For someone who loves a routine, it will not be an easy first few
months!
The two major take
aways from Jamie's book are that (1) consistency is the key , keep putting him on the
pot every single time till he starts going on his own & (2) once you take
the diaper off, DON’T PUT IT BACK ON (Except naps, sleeps, and er, umm, I even put
it on when I go to the mall). It’s a slow process and will take time. I know he
will eventually figure it out, like he has figured so much already in his short
1.5 years of life!
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