Potty Training Caelan

I was a little gun shy of potty training Caelan.  You can say that we were a bit scarred from Micah as his potty training resulted in him holding in his bowel movement for days until we had to force laxatives into him.  To this day, I can't figure out who was more traumatized by this--him or us.  

 

With firstborns, you read the books and get the best counsel you can:  Wait until he's ready.  He'll tell you.  Well, Micah could sit in his poop for hours and never be bothered by it.  So, we waited.  Well,  a little too late.  He was about a couple months away from his fourth birthday and he got very used to his diaper and was deathly scared of sitting on that potty.  We tried everything!

So, when Caelan turned 3 in October, we started talking about it.  And about a month ago, we implemented.  The kid did great.  We basically ran around the house diaperless (praise God for hard wood floors) so he could feel when it was time.  First, we started by putting a timer on every half hour and he would go and sit on the potty.  He did really well with that.  Than  we eased off the timer and tried to do it on his own.  Sometimes he made it to the bathroom, sometimes he didn't.  When he did, we used a sticker chart and some candy as reward.  When we were out, I had him put on a pull up, and at times he forgot and went again in his pull up.  When he asked me to clean his diaper, I just told him I'd do it in five minutes so that he could remember the awful feeling of yuck and not do that again.  He noticed many of his little friends, especially Micah's buddies--- commented that it stunk.

Well, it worked.  He is pooping like a champ.  In fact, most days you'll hear a flush and a scream from some level in the house, and he yells "Buh bye poopie!!! Hello flushing!"  And he'll tell me how big it was or what shape it's in.  The other day, he said it was long windy rope.  Great visual.

Very stress-free.  This is a HUGE relief for us that our little man can go in any bathroom now, and is dry through the night.  Thank God because we might still be in post-traumatic stress from the last go-around, not sure we would have survived this one.