Success on the Potty!

So…we did the potty party two weekends ago, and after spending over 30 hours in the bathroom, we saw minimal success. We lived in the bathroom: ate lunch in the bathroom, spun a top over 100 times, ate snacks, watched movies, jumped, danced, made obstacle courses, and made up jazzy personalized potty songs, of course, all in the bathroom. Because we have only one bathroom, everyone modeled going on the potty and was rewarded with what was promised Jackson if he would actually do the same. This means everyone got ice cream and got to put on his sister’s coveted blue floral jacket (yes, I even squeezed into it myself). On Friday, I even home schooled my girls in the bathroom. I was determined not to miss that magical “must pee” moment.

Jackson’s bladder control proved to be far better than my own. He would regularly hold it for 6 hours at a time. One day he did not eliminate between the hours of 6pm and 11am. That’s a lot of waking hours just sitting in the bathroom waiting… He clearly was under the impression that we did not want him to eliminate at all! Yikes! Where did he get that idea??? At one point when he was taking a 10 minute breather off the potty (running off steam still in the bathroom), he began urinating on the floor. When I plopped him on the toilet, he completely stopped and held it for another couple of hours! We  cheered and rewarded the few droplets that made it into the toilet as though he had eliminated completely, but he still didn’t seem to understand because the next day, I placed him on the toilet when his potty dance reached dramatic heights. I could tell he could barely hold it in, but when he started to pee in the toilet, a look of horror crossed his face as if to say, “Oh no!! I’m not supposed to be doing this! Of course we dually celebrated and reinforced the success with a sorbet treat. Those two minor successes were all we had during that weekend potty party. Needless to say, I was discouraged and felt half crazed after being cooped up in the bathroom for so many hours.

On Monday morning, I was wondering, “Was this weekend a waste of time?” But over the next few days I realized it was all valuable training time. We didn’t have as many training opportunities because of his incredible holding power, but his attention was drawn to the potty routine and the feeling of needing to pee repeatedly. Over the next few days, we spent 2-3 hours in the bathroom, and changed our approach. With daddy modeling, we decided to try standing to pee. It worked. Standing to pee completely eliminated Jackson’s resistance to peeing, gave him a sense of control, focus, and purpose. The favored flowered blue coat (whatever is motivating, use it!) continues to be the most powerful reinforcer.

Today Jackson ran into the bathroom, pulled his pants down, opened the potty, and started peeing all by himself three times before I even realized he was in there. Hurray!!! Now we just have to figure out pooping on the potty…