Right around his 2nd birthday, Xander began sitting on the little potty I found for him at a garage sale. And he would use it! Excellent, except I had a three month old and was not in the mood to potty train. So we just let him use it when ever he wanted. No pressure, he'd either do it himself or keep with the diapers.
Well, over the past six months, we have slowly upped the ante with the training.
I bought a second little potty so that we had one upstairs and one downstairs. Well, he saw the kids at the babysitters use the regular toilet and he wanted to do that too. One time I was in the basement and heard the toilet flush and ran up the stairs yelling "Xander!" He ran up to me and yelled back, all excited, "Go pee!" Well, alrighty then. Suddenly during this past week he has decided to use the little potty again. I think moving the footstool back and forth from the toilet to the sink became too much.
We implemented a reward system. Xander would get one raisin for sitting on the potty, two for a 'number one' deposit and three raisins for 'number two'. This went really well for a while and we felt better about it then handing out M&Ms. We've scaled back on advertising the rewards and just hand them out when he remembers.
We have books. We were given
Everyone Poops and I found another book that had a button that sounds like flushing. We've spent plenty of time reading in the bathroom with those books, and Xander recognizes the animals in Everyone Poops. And he points out the poop in every picture.
We've gotten videos from the library. Xander's favorite was called Potty Power. It was horribly annoying and he loved it. He has spent the past two months asking to see it again. Instead, we just ask him if he has potty power and then dance when he does his business appropriately. There was also the Bear in the Big Blue House version of potty training. Mostly that has just caused requests for more Bear videos and insistence that Josie wants to watch them. Really, they aren't for Xander, they are for Josie.
The babysitter has been great with creating a routine of going to the bathroom as soon as we arrive and right before we leave. She's the one who really started the dance celebration. Xander loves her and loves that she gets so excited.
We bought Xander training pants and for Easter he received Disney underwear. His favorite pair is Dash, from the Incredibles. He's never seen The Incredibles, but there you have it. He likes wearing the underwear but we still have accidents once or twice a day. There is definitely improvement and it would help if I just stop using pull-ups all together.
The most recent enticement is the sticker chart.
I started out with smiley face stickers. The small ones were for when I reminded Xander and he went to the bathroom. The medium ones for when he remembered to go himself. And the big, giant stickers (Xander's words) were for 'number two'. And you will notice the frowny faces. Those were for accidents. We don't reprimand Xander or yell at him, but we're sad that he didn't go to the bathroom to do his business. Especially since the I ask him if he needs to go and he says no and then five minutes later there is an accident.
I ran out of smiley faces, so this week we are using stars. He's been doing really well this week. For a while he was really starting to fight going to the bathroom. Now that I've back off, he seems more willing to go. He will sometimes insist on me waiting outside the bathroom, but that results in any combination of toilet paper in the toilet, not pointing down and puddles forming, shampoo getting squirted around, Xander trying to pee standing up or, sometimes, success.
At nap time, he likes to change into his pajamas - he has two pajama pants on plus two pajama shirts plus an extra shirt on top.
