I have a to do list for this weekend that makes me both excited and apprehensive.
To Do:
Excited: Watch and listen to General Conference. (Seriously one of my favorite times of year!)
Apprehensive: Start potty training for real.
Wondering if I am insane to combine them. Thinking: Oh well, there are some things you just can't stop.
I don't feel ready to potty train, but will I ever really? I mean there are some things you just have to do...and then the experience teaches you. There is only so much you can prepare. I thought I was ready to have kids long, long ago, but actually having one made me realize I would never have been ready. Sometimes you just have to leap.
So I've read books and I'm mentally trying to couch myself to not react negatively to the eventual accident - because that, and all the clean up is what I dread most! I am really hoping this just goes really smoothly, I don't want anything I say or do to set it back. Lily has been interested in using the potty for ages. We've read her books, she's seen how it all goes down, and looks up to her older cousins who already use the potty. She's not afraid of the toilet flushing, but she hasn't totally mastered pulling down her own pants. I figure that will come. She's got all the other recommended skills, and the main thing is right now she's really interested. She actually pulled the potty seat with attached steps that my sister lent us down from a stack of boxes, out of the back room, and across the house to the bathroom a couple of weeks ago saying: "I want to potty train!" I am so hoping the determination she showed then will carry us through this learning curve. I have this fear that once we are doing it as a routine she will lose interest really fast! I think some of her determination might come from the fact that it is she that wants to do it not I. I feel like I have to balance staying laid back and nonchalant - so that she feels like she chose it and keeping it steadily moving forward so that there is progress.
You know I'm a mom to dedicate this much thought to the subject of potty training. Do/Did you feel this stressed over potty training when you taught your kids? Sometimes I wonder if I am weird - I mean, using the toilet is just one of those everyday things, how complex can it be to teach it!? I guess I just want to get past the dirtiest-dirty work as soon as possible.
Maybe this is the perfect weekend for this because while I'm trying to not stress, Conference will be on edifying and uplifting my spirit and putting my perspective back in the right place just when I need it to!
Ha ha - I never thought I would write anything combining these two topics!
4 comments:
Well, I hope that your conference/potty training experiment is going well.
I think potty training was one of the most difficult things I've had to tackle as a parent. Seriously. I read everything, I mean everything, I could get my hands on, and none of it prepared me for what the trenches would be like. Each child is so very different and my first turned out to be one of the most challenging kind of kids to potty train-- stubborn and terribly afraid of toilets and flushing them. (She still doesn't like to flush the toilet, and needs help to face her fears of sitting on one in an unfamiliar bathroom.) She was four years old before we could officially consider her potty-trained.
Yes, four.
The good news is that it was easier to potty train the next two. Probably because they had different personalities (and we were more experienced at it). Still, I'm SO glad that I only have to do this one more time. Fingers crossed that Kyle will be easy.
Maybe Lily will be so excited about it that it will be a breeze.
If she is begging to use the potty you will have very little effort to put in... really! She will take a while to feel the urge but will nail it before you know it! By the way, I saw your comment on my blog. Not one family picture?? We need to talk:)
General conference weekend sounds like a great time to start, since the weekend we started we stayed home for the entire weekend and didn't go anywhere. I can't wait to hear how everything's going and hope you've had success! I was totally nervous and didn't know what I was doing, and then once we got it done I kinda wondered why we put it off so long. I'll definitely be potty-training all my other kids earlier than my first one, let me tell you that! Good luck! You can do it! :)
Thanks for all the encouragement, ladies! The weekend was hard, but went pretty well. She made it in at least twice each day. However, for various reasons we decided to stick to the diapers and not push potty training for another couple of months, just let her take the lead and go when she wants to. I think we will all be more ready after the holidays. I am a lot less afraid of the process after trying it though! :)
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