Xavier and the Potty
Greetings to everyone.
The last four days have been grueling. We have three potty stations set up: one in each upstairs bathroom and Xavier's portable potty chair (which goes wherever we need it: downstairs, outside, on trips, etc). Xavier runs around commando. Parents (being house-bound these past four days) must watch Xavier for his tells and then coach him to use the potty. There is no email checking, no phone calls, no cooking, no reading of potty training materials. The moment you take your eyes off him, there's an accident.
I agree with the author whose techniques we've been adapting to Xavier. Accidents in the first week of training are the parents' fault, not the child's. Without exception, every accident occurred when the parent watching Xavier wasn't watching him. Oh, we may have been in the same room, but we weren't watching. We were distracted. It only takes a second or two and you've missed the signal.
Fortunately, we have had only a few accidents. The scariest thing has been the pooping. It filled me, for one, with anxiety at coaching/teaching this skill. Peeing is not that big a deal. Xavier needs to go frequently; he is drinking water all the time. Lots of practice opportunities here. Not so much with poop, and there is a whole new and different set of sensations from the bowels.
Add to that (as if to rub salt in the anxiety wound), the moment you go naked or commando, the three to four times a day of pooping drops down to one time a day—if you're lucky! Xavier's signals for pooping are harder to learn because he doesn't need to show them as often.
Friday, while Daddy was distracted with the business of preparing lunch, Xavier was running around. It was after lunch Daddy noticed a Xavier dropping on the dining room floor. It fell right out of his pant leg sometime while he was running around (he was wearing shorts with really loose legs).
OK, parental fail, and a missed opportunity to train with solids, but still a silver lining. I brought Xavier over and we examined the poop on the floor. "Did you poop on the floor?" I asked. "Yes," Xavier replied only a little shyly. "That's gross!"
Right then and there I developed the mantra: "We poop in the potty, not in our pants." Xavier picked up the chant immediately. "Where do we poop?" I will ask. "In the potty!" Xavier replies. "Do we poop in our pants?" I will ask. "No!" Xavier replies.
Some time after dinner, Xavier started behaving oddly, his hand not so much pulling up his pants all the time, but holding a butt cheek. We sat him on a potty station. Nothing. So, back to play and careful parental attention.
Not long after, Xavier said, "My butt tickles."
Drop everything! It was the stereotypical race the the main bathroom: out of the play room, through the dining room, down the hall and into the bathroom. Was the station set up? No! Apparently, potty-trained adults live in this house also. Rushing, the little seat was dropped down and the stepping stool moved into position. Xavier dropped his pants and Daddy hoisted him onto the seat.
Xavier cried, growing more distraught by the second. He wanted down. It was the cold air pumping out of the ventilation duct right on his near nakedness. The AC kicked on just as we ran into the bathroom. Covering the vent with a towel did nothing to calm him.
OK, run to the portable potty across the hall. More screams of not liking it. The good news, though, he did not yet have an accident.
We ran to the final station, the cushioned seat in the master bathroom. At last, Xavier calmed, but still he wanted down. He was no where near relaxed enough to do the job. The book we're modeling our training on explained, using many pages to underscore the point, that emotion would control success or failure with the sphincter.
I pulled two spent toilet paper rolls from the trash. I gave one to Xavier and I kept one. I started doing silly things with my roll while making funny faces. Xavier laughed and started copying me. After a few minutes, he settled down. He sat still for a moment. I took that moment to pray "Jesus, help him understand."
Success! Not much, just three little floaters. There was a party in the bathroom, with dancing, shouting and looking at the results. Xavier was ecstatic. Mom came in to see before he flushed his business into the main line.
Over the course of the next thirty minutes, Xavier told us on four more occasions that his butt tickled. Four more successes, the third one a massive success (if you get my meaning).
Sunday morning had a pee accident. Also, Xavier suddenly got shy about pooping. No longer did he run up and confidently say "My butt tickles" as he had Friday night and Saturday. He sneaked into a corner and quietly filled his pants. We got to him quickly. Once again, we intoned the mantra "Poop in the potty not in my pants." The rest of the day, no accidents.
Sunday night, Xavier self-initiated his first pee. He came and found Dad and wanted me to come with him (that's what we had been doing not long before). I thought he wanted me to chase him. He said "no" when I asked him. He disappeared into his room (where we often keep the portable potty). I walked in. He dropped his pants and sat down. Awesome! Another Pentecostal jig was danced because he did this completely uncoached. I danced that jig too soon.
Less than thirty seconds later, Dad still in the clouds, Xavier dropped his pants again and sat on the potty. This time it was not pee. Yep, Dad shot into the heavens and Mom joined in. Not only was the poop self-initiated, it was the first time Xavier used a different potty location.
We felt confident enough to let Xavier stay with the woman who watches him occasionally for us. Rebecca called her to make sure she was OK with it and to relate Xavier's progress. She is also potty training her youngest daughter. She was glad to take him for the day.
Monday with the sitter was a success, only one poop accident. Xavier also self-initiated a second poop. Monday night at home, Xavier did well. He has started copping an attitude if you try to set him on the potty and he does not have to go. This, too, is great progress.
He is preferring his portable potty over the two toilet stations. The reason is he can control it all. He does not need help getting on and off the seats of the adult toilets. Oh, did I mention the point that he is in control? Try to help him and he acts like a three-year old saying, "Stop it! I do it." This, too, is fantastic progress!
We've also been doing the night-time training. We check on him at intervals during the night, putting him on the potty at those times. With one exception, Xavier does nothing; he just wants to go back to sleep. But in these last nights, his "sleep pants" (that's what we call the pull up he wears at night; we don't want him to think he is wearing a diaper) have been bone dry every morning (and after his naps) and no poop in the pull up either. Progress!
Ditching the Diapers
Greetings to all.
Yesterday was the day. Rebecca put it in our calendars, even moved it once. Still, we had some trepidation and thought to move it off again. After some discussion, we determined we did not have the time to move it off.
The previous three attempts at potty training ended, in a mild word, unsatisfactorily. The Mississippi (a word, by the way, Xavier speaks quite clearly and without slurring it) attempt ended after a day and a half. Once the newness of peeing in the toilet wore off, Xavier simply wasn't interested. Even his teachers at the CDC said he had no interest.
We tried again the first week in July. That lasted about a day. Xavier demonstrated growing resistance and frustration. We ended it, thinking he was not ready (a myth, we later learned). We also did not want to create another problem like we did with his eating by pressuring him (we are still recovering from that!)
We tried again a few weeks later. Again, no joy.
Rebecca and I had not been idle during the down times. We researched on the web (big mistake, by the way). We interviewed friends who had just successfully gone through the process (even tried some of their techniques). We asked complete strangers we met in malls and in parks and playgrounds for advice.
Nothing worked for us. Then, some friends of ours mentioned a book. They handed us their copy and said, "We love that book!"
Flipping through the table of contents, it appeared to cover everything. With nothing to lose but $7.99 plus shipping, we fired up the browser and shopped Amazon.com.
The book, written by a woman known as the Pied Piper of Poop, arrived the day before we had scheduled round four to start. It's arrival so close to the time was one reason we thought to push of the training again. Instead, we power-read the necessary sections (about half the book) the night before.
It was uncanny. The book listed everything we had tried and everything we had heard. It said that, except in rare instances, none of that will work, but only prolong the training. Also, she blew several myths we held to (most are quite common even from pediatricians) out of the water. Her well-explained reasons and experience gave her credibility. Was the Pied Piper going to be another road to failure? We were going to find out.
The first thing we did (and it was hard, especially for Daddy, who loves a plan B and back-out strategy) was ditch the diapers. They're gone. We burned our ships; there would be no going back. Let me tell you right there: that sets a tone for success, both in the us parents and with Xavier. "You are going to learn how to use the potty today," we explained. "No more diapers for you. You're a big boy now."
Xavier fought Rebecca on the Phase I portion of (surprisingly) being naked the first day or two. The only way to calm his hysteria was to pull a little from Phase II and let him go Commando. Once he got to wear pants, Xavier seemed fine with things.
We had two bathrooms set up and ready. We had a small potty we carried from room to room. We spent the entire day with Xavier. We followed him everywhere, generally using a parental tag-team approach. We watched for his tells so we could learn them.
Peeing was easy. Xavier has had this down since Biloxi, and he's comfortable peeing in either the toilet or his portable potty. The whole point of Phase I is to learn his tells and get him to go from clueless to I peed, to I'm peeing, to I need to pee. (pee and poop, not just pee).
Rebecca figured out his tell for peeing quickly enough. We had no accidents. However, Xavier did manage to poop right in front of us. He gave no indication he was pooping. That was a mess! The lack of (a recognizable) tell for pooping was a major setback to us emotionally (have you ever spent every waking minute of every hour following around a three-year old waiting for tells? It's fatiguing; many times you are so bored, you think your head might pop off).
We decided to also do the night-time trained the Pied Piper recommended. No poop, but still good success with peeing. We learned Xavier can (and does) hold his pee long into the night while sleeping, a very good thing!
Today will be more of the same. The connecting of the dots from sensation to seeking a potty have not yet formed in Xavier's thinking. Hopefully, today will also see some success along the poop line. To us, that is the scariest one. I must agree with our guidebook's author: we are changing Xavier's life-long habit of pooping in a diaper. It's all he has ever known.
Xavier's First Bird House
Greetings everyone.
Rebecca and I have been keeping our eyes open for a cabinet to put in the kitchen to help organize it and get the clutter off the counters. Last Friday, we found one that fit the bill at Costco.
Rebecca arranged with her sister, Aunt Chellie, to come down Saturday. "I do like visiting with you," Rebecca told Chelle on the phone. "But I really need you to watch Xavier while Michael and I pick up a cabinet. And, we might need your help getting the cabinet off the truck."
Aunt Chellie arrived to the chaos of Rebecca trying to figure out how to get a truck rented before the last cabinet got sold to someone else. The Costco we found the cabinet at is too small to store items for pickup we were told.
Chelle brought with her a nice project for her and Xavier to work: a bird house kit. It was a fun and thoughtful idea.
By the time Rebecca and I returned with to cabinet, Xavier was closed to being finished with his painting of the bird house he and Aunt Chellie assembled. Chelle explained that the roof went on upside down, but the glue was dry before that was noticed.
In the evening, when we went to hang the house in the crab apple tree just off the front porch, we determined the upside down roof wasn't going to work. To help accent that fact, one of the roof panels popped off.
We coerced the other panel to pop off with some effort, then glued them back in place, right-side up. This also meant Xavier's paint job on the roof was now inside the house.
Today, Xavier once more took up his paint to color the roof. The bird house kit came with six colors: red, yellow, green, blue, purple and orange. Xavier would dip his brush in the orange, then the purple, then the blue, green, yellow, and finally the red. This he did every time he needed more paint. The resulting color: a warm mud.
Still, things turned out well. Xavier had fun. We got the house hung. All while a little hummingbird sat in the crab apple tree and watched us. I told Xavier, "He's waiting for the paint to dry before he moves in."