How do working parents potty train?This is not meant to be an odd question. I have a real conundrum. And I'm sure I'm not the first, A Mums Survival guide has a few tips in the potty training for working parents' department. Now, I've never fretted much about potty training, it's not something I've ever looked forward to, while I always thought it would be easy peasy. Cubling is now 33 months, and ticks all the boxes for readiness.
Apart from the one that has something to do with actually wanting to use the potty/toilet.
She's funny with that. She knows what potty and toilet are for. She saw her cousin being potty trained about 4 months ago. She sometimes wants to sit on the toilet and really wants to do a wee in there, but nothing ever comes out of it, and I have to drag her off the toilet. However, whenever I try to use those magic 3 days at the weekend to use the potty or toilet, she initially likes to sit on it, usually on day one we have one success and the rest accidents, and from day 2 she becomes very.reluctant.indeed. She begs not to go to the toilet, but also doesn't want nappies. Also on day 2 and 3 there are no more successes, only accidents.
While I'm not particularly pushy with potty training, I've tried three time so far to reach some degree of potty training in my 3 days off work, because I believe she's ready. You see, if I'm lucky, I don't work Fri-Sun. Recently though, I had to do a considerable amount of weekend work, which meant that I hardly ever even got 3 days in a row. Now, I can't exactly potty train for three days with maybe one success and then hand Cubling over to the childminder. That's cheeky. Even so, I'd reached the point of considering cheekiness, but asked her first to have a guilt free conscience. She said no sorry. I don't blame her.
Her tip was to do it when I'm off work for a week. That didn't really happen this year as I took individual days off before and after my niece was born. So I left it a while. Now I'm off work for 3 weeks, and this has to be the time. Because, to be fair, I won't get any week off work until Cubling starts at nursery and I really want her out of nappies by then. Another motivator is the fact that she now regularly gets a very sore bum in cloth nappies (something that never had been a problem until she turned 2) and we're using many more disposables than I'm happy with.
So then, round 4 of potty training has been called. It's not been going well. While at home, in the evening, she'll happily sit on the toilet for 30 minutes until I drag her into bed, at my SIL's house she had no inclination to cooperate. Yes, I'm bribing her with chocolates. Anything at this point to get her to be cooperative, I don't care. Yes, she does want chocolates. Oh and she does understand that she'll get them if she manages to do a wee or poo on the potty or toilet. Yet her interest in doing so wanes with every hour. We've done the potty dvd, role play and books. One (German) book, Der Klokoenig (loo king) has a great example of how to unroll a toilet roll into a heap of paper. So she does that bit on the toilet with great joy and says she's a loo king now.
Two days in and she hadn't pooed at all. I got rather worried. Her all day complaint about a sore tummy didn't make me feel any better. We had curry in the evening, surely curry would yield some BM? With plenty of cajoling, cuddling, singing, story reading and even feeding while sat on the potty we got her to at least sit for a long time. It was clear that she needed to poo. I even got the chocolate out, unwrapped it and held it in front of her like a carrot to cajole a donkey. Jee. This was getting a bit much. She alternated between big grins (I very happy! - at the prospect of getting chocolate) to a very worried face caused by fear that it might be sore.
Then finally, and please avert your eyes if this is too much information, that was what got her not one, nonono, but TWO pieces of chocolate:
Needless to say we had a big cheer and a little girl who was jumping for joy and proudly presented her turd to her auntie and cousin (the latter even shared her enthusiasm at the sight).
I very happy now. I know it's only a start. But it's a start, right?
