Day 7 - Thursday April 9, 2020
One week in and we were considering calling it quits or at least letting him wear a pull-up since wet pants didn’t seem to bother him anyway so it seemed pointless to let him wet his pants and make a mess for us. But I kept going back to this sentence in the book, “When going through Hell...keep going…” The author talks about how we have no idea how our child is processing all of the information we are giving him and each new day he is taking everything in and you never know when it’s going to click. Well this happened for us on Day 7!
Day 7 started out like the past 4 days. He woke up wet, didn’t want to sit on the potty, didn’t even want to wear pants. He had an accident a few hours after he woke up and then we let him go pants-less after that. We were beginning to think maybe our earlier success on Day 3 had been a fluke and he was really still in Block 1. During his nap, I started reading more of the book for answers and re-read this part about over-prompting and backing off, where she talks about how striking this balance will solve most problems you are having. I could tell we were obviously over-prompting and also hovering but it was hard to believe if we backed off, he would actually self-initiate. She talks about how you need to give control over to your child, even though they haven’t proven they can handle it yet. I am definitely a bit of a control freak and I knew we were over-prompting, making it too big of a deal and also sitting there, watching him and waiting for him to pee! We finally tried what she suggests: prompt and then walk away. It’s so hard to do especially when you know they have to go and leaving them could mean an accident. But after nap, we tried it and an amazing thing happened!! He ran to the potty, pulled down his pants and PEED!!!! We were in shock!! Then he did it again later and pooped!! It was just a small one but we were so excited!! He was so proud of himself and we did our potty song and dance and made a big deal of it.
So turns out, he just wanted to have the chance to do it himself, haha! Of course, that’s Dylan! So we kind of took the backing off thing too far though because we knew a big poop was coming (he hadn’t pooped in a day & a half) but we got too comfortable that he would just go on his own so during dinner he ran to the pantry and Mark went to find him and saw him squatting in there but instead of putting him on the potty, he asked him if he had to go poop and when he didn’t, we just left him alone. Well he proceeded to hide under the table later and pooped a huge log while we were eating dinner! We smelled it immediately and he was able to get a little in the potty but it was kind of hilarious. We still are feeling SO proud of him though and today, the backing off has really worked like a charm. I am really going to try and remember to take notes at the end of each day. It’s taking longer than with Clark who started to “get it” on Day 2 (Clark HATES being wet and dirty!) but I’m confident Dylan is progressing and is well on his way to being potty trained!
No comments:
Post a Comment