I had to look back on my blog to see when I first posted about potty training. April 1st was the date. We are now on September 2, so its been four months since I started potty training my son. I am happy to say we have made some progress. My son is not completely potty trained but he is a lot closer now than he was four months ago.
My son now knows how to pee in a potty. He also knows how to sit down in the potty at such an angle so that when he pees urine does not spray all over the bathroom floor and anyone (me) who might be in the vicinity. He is also less likely to have an accident, thereby soaking his training underwear, pants, and anything else that he may be sitting on. I learned the hard way to make sure that when he is in his training underwear he is sitting on a towel. In the beginning, I was saved by the towel more times than I can count!
I was also helped in the potty training process by our awesome habilitation therapist who unfortunately is no longer with us. When she was with us, the first thing she would do is come in and set the timer and put my son on the potty. Every twenty minutes during the days that she came to our house he was on the potty. He hated it but it made a difference.
He is also making progress with sitting on the potty and actually using the potty at school. With the help of aides, he sits on the little kids potty and goes to the bathroom. I am not sure how often he is doing this but I believe it is becoming more of a regular routine on his part and he definitely has less resistance to the aides than he does to me.
But, with all the steps forward we are still a couple of steps shy of completing the potty training process. My son still argues, runs away, fights, struggles with me every time I tell him he has to go on the potty. His first response is always "don't have to" followed by "NO POTTY!" I only make him sit on the potty every couple of hours when we are at home so I know he will have to do something. Of course, once he sits down he usually pees. It would be nice for my son to acknowledge (at least once) that yes, he has to go on the potty. This leads to the other problem that we are still facing; my son still will not tell us when he has to go to the potty. I do not know if it is because he does not understand the sensation of having a full bladder and then the urge to go or if he is just being stubborn since he always says he does not have to go. I personally believe he is not yet made the connection and so I am in stuck as to how to explain this part of the process to him in a way that he can understand. Hopefully, as we continue to put him on his potty he will make the connection and learn to just use the potty when he needs to and that will curb the battles we currently experience.
Additionally, because he cannot tell us when he needs to go, this leads to the problem of pooping. Namely, my son has a habit of pooping in his training underwear and not his potty. I have sought and continue to seek advice in this portion of the potty training process because frankly I am getting tired of having to change him, bathe him, and clean the clothes every day when he does this. On the positive (if there is a positive side to poopy underwear) my son does tell me when he poops in his underwear and does say he is "so sorry" he has done this. He has managed to poop in the potty a couple of times, which he thinks is "yucky" but who doesn't think it's yucky? Of course, this does not solve the problem but again, we are moving closer to the ultimate goal of being potty trained.
So my son has slowly moved out of diapers and into pull-ups and when we are home for any length of time into training underwear. We have also transitioned him to training underwear at night because he has managed to stay dry through the night and even in the morning until we put him on the potty after he wakes up (again arguing with us about needing to go). So there is a glimmer of hope that my son will not take a year to be potty trained. Next steps, telling us when he has to go, and learning to stand and pee. That should be really interesting!
