raising kids » and another thought

You may remember we’ve been going through potty training with my youngest. We bought her motivational underwear hoping to kick-start her enthusiasm. Then we stopped using pull-ups and dressed her in underwear for the daytime (pull-ups on at night).

As expected, we had a lot of accidents (and a lot of laundry). Then one day it just occurred to me that my daughter wasn’t having as many accidents as when we started and she was actually using the toilet. Sometimes she would tell me she had to go to the bathroom; sometimes I would just take her to the bathroom. But she was actually using the toilet at least for peeing, bowel movements are a whole other issue.

So you’re reading this thinking What’s the problem? I don’t see any drawbacks.

We had the Santa Claus parade come through town the beginning of the month and I knew finding a bathroom near the parade route would be next to impossible and the likelyhood of accidents was high so I had my daughter wear a pull-up. I told her it was just in case she had to go to the bathroom and we couldn’t get to one. So we’re sitting on the side of the road, the parade has just started and my daughter tells me she has to go pee. I explained that there wasn’t a bathroom and to just pee in her pull-up; that it was okay. She got upset and insisted she had to go to the bathroom. After about 5-minutes of whining she became distracted by the parade and we never heard about the bathroom again. When we got home I took the pull-up off and discovered she never went pee. She held out until we got home and she could go on the toilet.

It seems my daughter has developed an aversion to using her pull-up, which I guess is a good thing but can be somewhat inconvenient. On our recent plane ride from Florida, inconvenient became problematic. Using the same rationale as with the parade, I had my daughter wear pull-ups on the plane as well as in Disney World. She would go pee in the bathroom but since she has issues with having a bowel movement in the toilet (usually has an accident in her underwear) she never had a movement the whole time. Four days later, driving home from the airport, my daughter was so upset and complaining her tummy hurt. It wasn’t until I got her home and put on underwear that she went into hiding and … tada… a bowel movement.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad my daughter is preferring to use the toilet over her pull-up, most times. I guess during this interim training stage, where your child uses the bathroom almost as often as having accidents, I thought I could rely on pull-ups as a back-up plan. I guess I never realized how well she would be conditioned to not use her pull-up. Hopefully this interim stage in training will pass quickly and the pull-ups can be tossed out.