Friday, February 24, 2012

A Struggle and A Triumph

First off, a couple disclaimers. 1) The struggle and triumph are not related. 2) This post talks about functions of the body—consider yourself warned. 

Well, much of today kind of felt like a step backwards. Ethan and I were doing better yesterday, but last night was a rough one, and today wasn't great either. Ethan was super whiny today, wouldn't take a nap, and had to be held all. the. time. And as usual, he kept asking to go outside. I thought a walk would do us both some good, but I felt grody and didn't want to leave the house unshowered. And since he wasn't napping and was super clingy, that just wasn't going to happen. Fortunately, Terral got home from work with enough time before he had to go teach that he could watch Ethan while he got some shipping done. Sometimes a shower is a blessed, blessed thing.

After my shower, I offered to drop the packages off for Terral, so Ethan and I went to the post office. He was having such a good time, I decided we might as well go to the nearby park. And the library too, while we were at it. Ethan was just so excited to be out of the house. He was exploring everything. I was glad it was warm enough that we could get some vitamin D without bothering about hats.

Well, after everyone was home again, a miraculous thing happened. Ethan tooted. Okay, that's not really miraculous, but stay with me here. He also started signing "potty", so I took him to the potty. Well, he thought it was cool for a second and played with the duck head, but then he wanted off. I asked him several times if he could go potty again. . .and he did. Who knew a little pee could cause such joy? I called Terral in and there was much celebrating. And a little picture taking. (Yeah, someday he's going to love that I posted this picture. And shared his bodily functions with the world.)

Terral thought we should reward him with something, but we were both stumped as to what for a minute. Then I suggested he be allowed to go outside again. I think that's a reward we can all live with pretty happily. :) It's extra fitting, too, because Ethan's signs for "go outside" and "potty" are pretty much the same thing.
We are pretty proud of our little (big!) 13-month-old.

It may be surprising that we are even trying this when he's so young, so let me explain. My friend Corinne is largely to blame. ;) She told me their experience of potty-training their oldest son. I don't remember exactly how old he was, but he was fairly young. I also can't repeat their whole "method", but the main idea that I got out of it was that they always signed and said "potty" whenever they could tell he was going. One day he signed potty at the appropriate time, so they knew he got the connection, and they started teaching him to go on the toilet. They had some setbacks when baby brother came, but he was still completely trained before he was two.

Later, I learned about elimination communication, which I think is a really cool idea, but I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of committing myself to it. One thing stuck out to me as I was reading a bit about it. One mom who used it said that if you do miss getting them to the toilet before a #2, change them as quickly as possible so they don't get used to sitting in excrement. I thought of all the horror stories I've heard about potty training, and I thought of how newborns cry when they need to be changed. And I realized how it's almost like we train them to sit in their poo and then we get frustrated when we want to mess with what they've learned is the way it's done. (Let me quickly interject that I am in no way trying to judge other parents and their training methods. These are just some thoughts I've had on the subject, and I obviously have very little experience.) So I decided that I would really like to avoid the power struggle if possible, and potty train sooner than later.

So when Ethan started communicating more, we started signing "potty", both when he went as well as when we did. And he picked it up fairly quickly. And then, oh, about a month ago, we realized that he was sometimes even signing "potty" before he went. And since learning things is so fun at this age, we really wanted to take advantage of the stage he was at. So we borrowed a little seat from my parents when we went to visit them. (Yes, I think I was trained on it.) And we started to take him to sit on it when he would make the sign. But we didn't do it every time, and we weren't sticklers about it. The main goal was to get him to make associations and get used to the toilet. So, we're really excited about this step that he's made, and we are definitely going to keep encouraging him, and I will probably take him to the toilet much more frequently than I have up to this point. But we are also not expecting complete potty training any time soon. Not that I would complain if it happened sooner than I think it's likely to. ;)

Wow, this post has turned out to be much longer than I meant it to be. Thanks for sticking with me. :) I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences on the subject!

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