Now I am a girl. I come from a family of girls. My first born was a girl. Do you see where I am going with this??? I had no clue where to even begin on potty training a boy. I mean I was probably confusing him even more by saying things like "sit down, now stand up, no now you need to sit down, now stand up , now aim and fire!!!" Until the "aim and fire" it was kind of like being in church....... So I thought back to my daughter. Then I had to slow down and think for a little bit So I started to ask myself questions like, "now what are some similar goals that we have here that we had for our daughter. Well we want him out of diapers!! That is a good goal, lets start with that. Now how do we do that? We tell him to put it in the potty!!!" This was going really well until i realized what I was about to tell my son to do. "Son we don't want you wearing diapers anymore and we want you to put it in the potty!!" Back to the drawing board......because with two of my three still in diapers, I can't afford a plumber to come fish out a diaper out of our toilet because i was not blunt enough to tell my son just "WHAT" we wanted him to put in the potty. So again I had to collect my thoughts. So we want him to use the potty. Well now we should tell him just what you are suppose to do on that potty. Now you must understand my son. I like to refer to him as buckwheat from time to time.
He likes to take his time with everything, and
when he is in the middle of doing what he was told to do he...well had already forgotten what he was suppose to do to begin with. When asked to do something like "Please go get your P.J's" he replies "otay" then later it gets quiet so I go to check up on him and he is sitting on his floor naked playing with blocks. I mean I would have thought by now he would be wondering why he was naked to begin with , but this didn't seem to bother him. Not to mention the fact that his vocabulary level is just a tad bit behind. So this makes it difficult when he needs to tell me that "he has to go" and I say "what??? I don't understa......... oh i see now..........yea ..........okay lets go change your pants"
So how do you take this beautiful child with these little challenges and try to potty train him. Well will tell you how..........we have a few motto's around here and one of them is "If you can't figure out how to do it..........Elmo can!!" That's right Elmo!! I love Elmo just as much as any other mom (and I will let you figure out just what that means) but that is not the point. The point is that this little furry thing that has been three and a half years old now for the past 20 plus years gets more respect in my house than me most of the time. I can tell him until I am red in the face what goes in the potty but it isn't gold until Elmo says it!!
So I put him in front of the television we watch the d.v.d of Elmo going on and on and on and on about the potty. Singing these little songs "it's potty time gotta get down low, it's potty time you can do it I know" and "Accidents happen( that's what they say) Accidents happen. They happen night or day" So then Elmo even goes into what are the words for "what goes in the potty" My son chose to hang on to the word "poo pa" and "pee pee" Before long we were going through Kroger's as my son was singing about "potty time" and calling everything "poo pa" I figured we were ready. He knows the song, he knows what we put in the potty, lets get some big boy underwear and do this!!! So we get his choice of underwear and he chose "toy story " underwear. "Here we go son. Lets put on your woody underpants and you tell me when you have to go pee pee, okay??" and he replies with "ooootay" Everything is going good until i hear my son say "somebody poisoned the water hole!!" He had an "accident" and that is how he chose to tell me. Well he finally figured out the pee pee part so now we have conquer the "poo pa" part.....Now I know that Elmo said "accidents happen" but I think that there should be a time frame from the point were we call it an "accident" to the point were we just call it "too lazy to quit playing with your toys and go to the bathroom" We offered him everything. I told him I would take him roller skating. I would buy him ice cream. We would go out together and buy a toy. At this point I was willing put a down payment on McDonalds for him if he would just figure it out!!!
Today FINALLY it all just clicked for him. I'm not sure on this but I think that I heard the angles in heaven rejoicing with me!! So I said "lets go get a blizzard from Dairy Queen!!!, Mommy is soooo proud of you!!!" to which he replied...."no mommy i want a sucker" ...............well at least that part was easier than I thought it was going to be........................
So my advice to the potty training mommas out there..............ELMO!!!
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