March was a month of potty training for Cory. I took the “he’ll get it when he gets it approach” instead of the “how to train your child in 3 days” approach, and it worked great for us! I left him in diapers at first, but used a reward system. If he tt’d in the potty he got a piece of candy (like an MnM or a Smartie). If he pooped in the potty, he got to pick a wrapped prize out of a big gift bag. One mistake I made was calling the gift bag his “poop bag”. Every time we are in a store Cory says loudly, “Can we take this home and put it in my poop bag!?” Of course it is always when someone is in earshot. With the next child we will simply refer to it as a prize bag.
After a week we moved him into underwear. (He chose Spiderman underwear when I took him to Wal-Mart to get some.) I was diligent about putting him on the potty every 2 hours or so, and he really didn’t have many accidents. After a few weeks I was feeling pretty confident with the whole thing and had him out running errands all morning. He prefers “big” toilets over the little training ones, so it’s easy to get him to use public restrooms. The mistake I made was giving him Raisin Bran for breakfast, and letting him snack on raisins and nuts while we shopped. I was at my last stop when Cory looked up at me with big eyes and said, “I’ve gotta go poop!” I told him to run to the potty, but he only took like two (very awkward) steps and looked back up and said, “I already went.” I set him up for failure with all of the fiber I guess, and it was a new “mommy experience” for me.
Since then we’re back on track, and I am very relieved to have this milestone behind us. I was so fearful of potty training and felt like I had no idea what I was doing. It turns out it was easier than I expected, and thank goodness we’ll only have one in diapers when baby # 2 gets here in June.
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