It's been almost a week since I have blogged as I have been preparing for finals before graduation!
Potty training is very close to my heart after going through so much with my middle child four years ago. I know there are so many parents who have high hopes that their child will pick up potty training quickly only to become frustrated, angry, even depressed because their child refuses to use the potty.
It's a combination of many things why a child refuses to go potty. When a parent is frustrated they will feel the tension and resist. When a parent disciplines their child because of potty training problems they will resist. There may come a time when a parent will have to step back from potty training for both them and the child to recuperate.
Having had a child with developmental delays (which I did not find out about until six months after successful potty training), behavior problems my eyes were opened to the fact that so many parents experience what I went through and sometimes even worse.
To have people come up and criticize you either bluntly or in disguise really hurts to the core especially when you have done everything you could under the sun to get your child to use the potty. You have people holding it over your head as if you are a failure as a parent because your child is not potty trained by a certain age. Then you have this wish for your child to attend preschool only to be told they won't be accepted unless they are potty trained by XX date.
I truly thought with my oldest son he would never be completely potty trained and if I did get him potty trained it would probably be after his baby brother who was newborn at the time, would be potty trained a few years later.
When I sat down with this same exact method I now offer to parents, I was doubtful it would work because nothing else had been working. As I read through the process, I developed a plan. Once I felt ready mentally and emotionally I implemented the process. In one weekend I had my son potty trained. In one sense I was very ecstatic and in another I was upset. Here was a method that worked in one weekend to accomplish a milestone for my son that took a year and a half!
Potty training is very possible with just about every child. It takes a combination of the parent being ready and the child relaxed and ready to work on it. If one or the other is not ready then most likely the time it takes to potty train will be longer. A parent must be patient and willing to be open to ideas in order to encourage their child to use the potty. I had to be open to letting my son take a favorite toy with him to the potty. In his case, it was a huge Blue's Clue's stuffed dog. He was relaxed and willing to sit on the potty and try going which he did successfully.
Labels: potty trained, potty training, potty training problems