…or how to potty train Kodi.

This is by no means a primer to potty training, but will contain ample references to matters related, so all ye uninterested parties, be warned and walk away!

Last year, Operation Potty started with grandeur and flopped miserably. In post-analysis, several reasons were cited for its failure

• Kodi hadn’t fallen into a peeing/pooping routine – it was still random and unpredictable.
• We always seemed to miss the timing by just a few minutes.
• We might have had some success if we sat with him long enough in the bathroom, but I had no patience for prolonging that bathroom time. After all it was summer, time to be playing outside, not sitting in the toilet all evening.

But though I shelved it for summer, I didn’t really stop trying. Every weekend we were home and whenever we fancied, we’d put him in underwear, but it was really no use. It was the same over and over. Missed timing, accident, cleaning up, frustration. Then my first trimester came and I was too exhausted to even think potty training, so the whole idea was scrapped again. During Christmas break, I revisited the topic one more time, with a lot more determination and resolve. We had to find what we were doing wrong and had to break the endless cycle of missed timing.

So I went with the tried and true method – bribing. If bribes can get you college admissions, surely they can buy you potty training?! We re-explained the whole process to Kodi – of how only babies use diapers and big boys use the toilet. I might have repeated a hundred times about how he should tell me and where he should pee. After revisiting the basics, we introduced the bribe. ‘Kodi, you pee in the toilet and you get 1 Barney sticker, you poop and you get 2. Deal?’ He sounded intrigued. It was the first time he was being rewarded for anything, so more than anything, he was curious about this whole game, I think.

Then it required a lot of discipline from us -

The first step was to take the diaper off and forget it even existed.

The second was to leave him free willy. This was not possible – it was winter, so we went with underwear and regular clothes on top.

The third was to come up with some pattern of timing. I refused to write down a schedule of his bathroom breaks in any kind of book – that was humiliating to both of us! (the fact that I’m writing down much more than that on the blog is another matter altogether!) So I used my timing as the guide. I was frequenting the loo so many times a day anyway, so why not time it to my visits! And thats how it started – every time I had to go, I would let him go first. And if he wasn’t successful, we tried again in half hour, if he was, he’d get a huge cheer and a sticker.

The fourth and most difficult was to brace ourselves for more accidents, and be patient when it happened, instead of giving into frustration and temper. After all, he was not doing it on purpose.

Unlike our previous tries, this method worked like a charm, right from the start!

My theories on why it worked…

• The lure of Barney stickers. We got out a fresh notebook for him, he picked the sticker he wanted, I put a date next to it, and a ‘good job’ with a star, made a huge deal and made him show it off to Bapa and all that. If he told us before he had to go, we doubled his bribe amount. Often during the day, I’d show him the notebook and marvel at how many he’d got already. That appealed to his vanity. The bribes made him feel it was worth his time to cooperate with us and try.
• His body was more regulated now, he was somewhat predictable.
• It was a case of I want to be a big boy like Amma. (Yes, to him, I am a boy. In fact, the whole world is comprised of boys, with the exception of Ukka who is a girl. But that’s not the point of this post. )
• Two and half seems to be some magic number around which a lot of toilet training comes automatically. So in the end, Barney might have helped only with motivation, the rest might have been his own readiness.

We left it at this before our India trip. I was hoping we could continue the process in India – after all, legend has it that toddlers come back from India trips fully potty trained.

Turned out to be quite the opposite for us. He refused to use the desi style bathrooms – the floor or the toilet. He wouldn’t use a western toilet unless it had the training seat on it, and we weren’t going to invest in that for just two weeks. So we were all over Pampers in India and I was quite disappointed about that.

Thankfully, when we got back, he picked up right where he had left off. I told his school that he seemed to be doing well and they gave it a try too. First couple of days, they kept his diaper on, and took him to the restroom every few hours. That worked, so they switched straight to underwear and we skipped the whole training pants phase! They used a diaper for his naps the first few days, but that turned out to be unnecessary, so now he is diaper free at naps as well.

It has been this way for a week now, and we only use one diaper a day, that too cloth, for night time. What a huge difference! Now I have to figure out what to do with all the money I’m saving

But, we’re still miles away from the real deal.

• He still does not tell me before he has to pee, I have to either time it or look for signs where he is fidgeting. He does tell me before he has to poop, so we’re okay there. Some mornings, though, he surprises me. Say I am in the middle of something when he wakes up, and it takes me 10 minutes or so to take him to the bathroom, he’ll wait till then and actually use the toilet for both purposes. I think he’s doing it unconsiously. It looks like, physically, he is ready. Just that he has to make the association and voluntarily exercise control.
• He still wont use any toilet that is not kiddie size or that doesn’t come with a trainer seat. Which means public restrooms are out! (Why don’t they have tot sized toilets in all public areas?) As of now, we keep our outings to 5 mile radius and drive home every 2 hours to give him a potty break! I am not exactly sure how to handle this part – do we buy one of those portable seats to carry around everywhere? (ewww!)
• Add to all this talks of stomach flu going around school. That might stall our progress.

But at this point, we’re definitely light years ahead of when Operation Potty started, which is why I have jumped the gun by posting this way before we’ve seen real success! Aryan’s Mom, K3, and others who may be in the boat that I was last year, if this posts helped you, you’ll let me know, won’t you?!