Adventures in Toilet Training: Part 1

At Tyler’s last check-up at 18 months, his Dr. mentioned that we could now begin “potty training”. But he also mentioned that boys are tougher to train than girls and usually aren’t trained until about 3. Tyler has been fairly easy at all the transitions so far. We moved from Kingston to Dallas last spring when Ty was 9 months old and it did not faze him a bit. We took his binkey away from him one night at 11 months and he did not protest at all. At 13 months he was completely off the bottle, and at 19 months he is sleeping in a toddler bed with no problems.

So we went to Babies R Us and bought a potty chair. I took it out of the box and put it together. Tyler took it apart. He wore the inner part as a hat, and tried to get daddy to wear it too. I have read that you should let them get used to the potty chair by dragging it around, playing with it, and doing whatever else they want with it.

We decided to keep it in the bathroom. The last couple of days I have been trying to get him to sit on it a couple times a day, before he takes a bath and after meals. The first time we tried this he sat on the chair (which he thinks is great), then he gets up and runs around a little, comes back and sits for a minute or so, then gets back up. My husband puts him in the bath tub and the little stinker immediately pees.

The next time, again before his bath he sits, then runs in his room, jumps on his bed, comes back in the bathroom and gets in the tub. While my husband was bathing him, I discovered that he had peed on his bed.

Again we tried the potty chair before getting him dressed. He sits on the chair for a little bit, gets up and runs around, sits back down for another minute, gets up and pees on the rug next to the tub.

So far no such luck peeing in the potty; just the tub, his bed and the rug. I will keep you updated as to our progress.