Potty Training

Teaching Myron this important life skill had fallen off my radar, but Em kept it on hers, and we (mostly Em) tackled it a few months ago (consider this a retro post).

Our daycare is very into child-directed learning and exploration, so no one there had emphasized the need for potty training. They are very accommodating and were okay with continuing to change Myron’s diapers with no end in sight. However, a batch of Myron’s peers had moved up to the Preschool room, which required using a toilet, and Myron was left behind for a bit as (we think) the oldest in the Preschool Transition room. In some ways, this was a useful growing experience for Myron. His teacher mentioned that he was much more talkative than usual, and this was a surprise to her. The thing is – it sounded just like his normal behavior at home, where he rambles to himself and quotes and sings songs from his favorite television shows while playing. Apparently he tones this down when he is among his peers, but perhaps having been in a classroom as probably the oldest (and definitely the most tenured) student there, it gave him more confidence to be himself.

Em made a couple of early attempts at reward-based potty training. There was a sticker chart for each correctly deposited pee and poop. Myron had a couple of successful pees here and there. He got interested in putting the little monster face stickers on himself but wasn’t at all interested in the chart.

Then Em bought a book which both our urologist and a classmate’s parent recommended. The first couple of chapters emphasized heavily that we were starting too late. It also had some helpful guidance though. Em also followed some recommendations from a letter from her friend, Sarah – one of the things she did was have a “potty party” to start the process. So Em set up a potty party for Myron, complete with a balloon, and when I came downstairs in the morning, Myron told me “happy potty day!” I think he was supposed to tell me “happy Father’s Day” at one point, and he said “happy potty day” for that too.

Myron already knew some of the concepts of using a potty from watching his peers. To spare the details, there were some successes, and there were some setbacks.

The thing that blew our mind was that he trained himself to get out of bed, open his bedroom door, walk to the bathroom, pull the kid size toilet seat down, pull his pants and diaper down, sit on the toilet, pee, flush the toilet, put his pants back on, go back in his bedroom, shut his bedroom door, and put himself back to bed. He did all of this successfully. His diapers were always dry at naptime, so we quit putting diapers on him for nap time, and he was fine.

These days, sometimes I try to get him to use the potty before we go somewhere, and he says “no!” very adamantly. Now that he has learned this skill, it seems he wants to be in control of when he pees and when he doesn’t.

With Myron’s new skill, he moved up to the Preschool room and joined his old classmates. One day when Em came to pick him up during his first week, one of his teachers stopped her and said, “the funniest thing happened today.” Then his other teacher came and said, “the funniest thing happened today.” This class sometimes combines on the playground with the next class up. In one of those combined playground sessions, some older kids approached Myron and asked what his name was. As the teachers recounted it, Myron responded “I’m the boss.” Then the older kids replied, “No, what’s your real name?”, to which Myron just repeated, “I’m the boss” and then beeped and acted like a robot. Later, we learned that he was actually saying, “I’m the bus”, which explained the beeping. We have been enjoying our multi-modal bike and bus commute to school.

Here’s a grab bag of some more photos, just since it has been a while.