Monday, January 24, 2011

First pee-pee

Potty training is such a stressful event for the child and parents, so we decided not to do it.  Elizabeth is a bright girl and we figured that at some point she would notice that only babies wear diapers and mommy and daddy do not.  We hoped to not make a big deal of potty training until it became a genuine issue in her toddler years.  Luckily for us, it doesn't look to be that way.

Two months ago, when Elizabeth turned 20 months, we bought a training potty and put it on the bathroom floor.  In the beginning, we didn't even mention to her what it was, it just became a fixture on the floor.  Slowly, we started to play with it, showing her how to take off the lid and put it back on and also how to sit on it.  For weeks, she sat on it backwards and it became a chair to brush her teeth on.  Then we started pouring water into it and calling it pee-pee.  Elizabeth is familiar with the terms pee-pee and poo-poo, because we always ask her before changing her diaper if she made a pee or poo.  So we hoped that she would make the connection between the two.

Occasionally before bath time, we would have her sit on the potty and then pour water into it and do the pee-pee celebration dance.  Well for the last two weeks, every time we undressed her to change her clothes or sometimes even just a diaper change, she wanted to sit on the potty for fun.  In the beginning, we used to follow her into the bathroom for every fun potty but then we started letting her go by herself and come out on her own a second later.  Then yesterday, she went to sit on the potty and came out yelling pee-pee.  Occasionally, she yells out pee-pee because she wants us to do the celebration dance with her, so I got up and waved and clapped my hands with her, but this time she was insistent on doing the dance multiple times and kept saying pee-pee.  So I went into the bathroom and sure enough I found pee in the potty.  So for the next five minutes, I picked her up, swung her around and we ran around the house doing the pee-pee dance. -S

1 comment:

  1. yay~~~ Phoebe also uses her potty as stepping stool to wash hands and get things that are too high for her. She did pee couple times on the regular toilet with the child seat. She almost pooped into the toilet, but she got scared and wanted to come down. I agree that it shouldn't be stressful nor pressured to the child. Besides, we still have boxes of diapers in the basement so I think we got some time. ;)

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