A Matter of Choice

Last Sunday we decided to start potty training Leo - well Aaron decided after I'd spent months faffing about it!. After a few attempts we realised the potty was no good and so got his trainer seat for the toilet and went straight for that.  The first few days weren't too bad - a few accidents but to be expected then Wednesday was not so good. I'm not sure if he got bored with our constant asking if he needed to go but he started saying he didn't want to go and unlike the previous days he would not even go and try, only to have an accident a few minutes later.  Any attempts to get him to sit on the toilet resulted in a big tantrum despite the promise of stickers for his chart, and second present after his second line of 10 stickers. Thursday was a slight improvement and he spent the morning down at my parents, so it was a lovely morning for me!  He tends to listen to my Mum so he used the toilet several times and had only one accident.  In the aftern...

A few weeks ago I posted about 'not' potty training  I knew the time was approaching or maybe had approached ages ago and I chose to ignore it but I've been putting it off for ages now. It's not the first time I've put making a change off, last year there was 'the battle of the bottle'    - where I bored everyone silly for months about the struggles of getting Leo to ditch his baby bottles and I did the same with moving him from a cot to a bed . You'd think I'd know better by now and realise that I might as well just get on with it, and it's probably not going to be that bad! On Sunday I had a lovely lie in while Aaron got up with Leo, when I got up we were unexpectedly in full potty training mode. Leo had asked for a new nappy minutes after getting one as he had done a wee, something he had never done before so Aaron asked him if he wanted to wear big boy pants instead and tell us if he wanted one.  He agreed and sat on the potty a couple of t...

Back in June last year Jenny and I ran 'Going Potty' - a Potty training blog carnival  something I hoped would assist me in what I thought was imminent potty training. In August I blogged about when I should start as Leo was not at all enthused about the idea.  There were some great comments about how I should wait until he was ready, and when he was it would all click into place. Hmmm, really? Out of his friends (all of which are 6 months older) he is the last to still be in nappies, I've tried to use this to our advantage as he loves his friends and will often get dressed/go to bed/ etc if he thinks the others (especially his 5 yr old friend Jack) are doing the same. It seems this tactic works in every way except when it comes to potty training. Google 'potty training signs' and you are presented with many lists of what to look for... Able to follow simple instructions, - yep, when he feels like it that is! Dislikes the feeling of a dirty nappy ...