I don’t think I’ve mentioned how potty training has been going with Jack.
Well, it hasn’t. At least not anymore, as of two weeks ago.
He did great the first two-and-a-half weeks, and then it was Thanksgiving. He did fantastic over Thanksgiving while we were at various houses and restaurants, with the exception of two (one big, one small) accidents. Those are forgivable and I can laugh about his bigger accident now. (Let’s just say the incident at The Old Spaghetti Factory made me grateful for several mamas in the bathroom with older kiddos who graciously repeated to me, “don’t worry…we’ve all been here before!” as they grabbed me more paper towels. It was bad.)
When we got home from our Thanksgiving festivities, something changed and all of a sudden Jack didn’t want to poop on the toilet anymore. He’s embarrassed by it. Every single day I cleaned out one or two poop-filled sets of underwear and with every single poop-filled set of underwear I got more and more upset at him. I lost my temper and he lost his. We were at war with each other, and it was a never-ending cycle. So two long weeks in, I called it quits. We’d tried consequences and cold showers and everything we could think of.
I really thought about plowing through it, but realized it just wasn’t worth the toll it had been taking on our mother-son relationship. I went to bed upset at him every night and knew something had to change.
So he’s in diapers again, but our relationship has never been better. So when I’m ready to make it work again (when he’s two-and-a-half? three?) it should be a cinch. He still holds his pee sometimes (when his diapers are fairly dry we take him to the bathroom when we change him and he goes right away for us), so next time around when he gets over this fear of pooping thing it should be easy, right?
Do not worry. We had a similar situation of Azure showing early interest in potty training around 20 months. We even tried the “Three day method.” That ended early due to a fever/GI tract thing. We went back to diapers after that, and we didn’t get back on the potty training wagon until Azure was well (WELL) past her 2 and 1/2 birthday (like three months past 2 1/2). We did make sitting on the potty before the night time bath a daily routine after Azure got over being sick at 20 months. It made all of us feel good, and it helped me feel like I wasn’t a failure (since everyone swears, crosses their hearts, etc. that the three day method works. Yeah… No. That is a big fat no).
Azure has had major public accidents at the park, twice at a birthday party, at the museum. Every time it happened other moms have been very understanding and supportive.
Thank you for posting this. I decided to not go through the rigamorole of training Jake yet. It’s not worth my sanity. Especially since I feel like I’m holding on to it by threads at times. We’ll try after we’re used to the craziness of new baby.
GOOD IDEA. I really think you have to take into account your own sanity and whether or not you can handle the added stress!