Potty training

Spud’s now potty-trained. Yay!

[And, when she is 15 years old, she probably will die of embarrassment or hate her mother if she ever finds out that I had posted her very glam picture here]

But, before you go judging on me being all smug and bragging about it, let me qualify, that, first, she only pees in the potty. For some reason, she refuses to let go of her poo in there.

Second, I claim no credit to her being potty –trained. While we have had the intention to start potty-training earlier by buying her own little potty when she was less than 18 months thinking that she has shown “signs that she is ready”, it was mostly a half-hearted effort on our end. No doubt that there had been moments when we thought that she just might be ready…well…she did not seem like she was.

And so, we continued to put her in a nappy, mainly because we were plain lazy to follow-through for most part of the day. It felt like it was all too much work to not only keep hounding her every 10 minutes if she needed to pee/poo or her telling us every 5 minutes that she has to do her deeds, but also having to take her to the bathroom THAT often and then came to the conclusion that she didn’t want to do either.

It was tiring and it can get quite frustrating. With little baby Squirt around, it all seemed like such a big effort. At that point, neither Silver Bullet nor I have a lot of energy left to deal with such things. The only times I would really encourage Spud to use the potty and make it a big deal when she succeeded was before her morning and evening shower. It seemed to be the only time where she could pee on cue and on target. Other than that, she is in a nappy 24/7.

So anyway, when I hear stories of other mommy friends putting in the effort to get their toddlers of about the same age to be toilet trained, and some who claimed with pride that their 16 month toddler is completely off nappies (I’m exaggerating here! But could be just as true), and then asking me if I started potty training my little tot yet; and if I haven’t yet, I should, it made me feel like I am such an incompetent Mom.  

I know I tried, but I also knew that I was not trying hard enough. In that respect, I was somehow convinced that Spud probably would still be in diapers when she is 5 or 6 years old. It could all jolly well be my fault, and to a certain extent, I could live with the thought.  I just did not have the energy to battle through this one. 

So, all this potty-training-crap when she is 2 years old was somewhat quite accidental.  

It happened because the school which we sent her to started her on it. It happened because, as I was told by her Homeroom Teacher, each time the older kids were being asked to line up to go to the bathroom, Spud would get curious. She‘d have this curious but unhappy and sad look on her face that questioned why she was being excluded from the activity.  Her observant teacher then included her in and got her to be diaper free for half a day in school so she can join in the use-the-potty queue. Spud somehow got into the groove of it quite quickly. I was then asked if it was OK to allow Spud to do that, and if I could please bring extra underwear for her from now on, just in case of “accidents”.

So, I said, Hell yeah! Go for it! I’ll bring 10 underwear if need be.   

2 days on being diaper-free for half a day in school, and I was told that Spud was doing really well.  I then thought perhaps, it was a practice we should continue at home. And so, after talking to her teacher in trying to understand what they did to make it sound so easy, and did not want to unintentionally undermine the school’s effort in potty-training her, I then told the Nanny to let Spud go diaper-less for the rest of the day when she gets home from school.

Within 3 days, Spud was no longer using any diaper in the day.  These days (it has now since been a month!), she goes to the bathroom herself and pees in her little potty when she feels the need to.

Truthfully, it was something which we did not expect to happen so quickly and so effortlessly. For us, it was such a pleasant surprise. I feel so proud!

The pooing, on the other hand, is a lot more challenging. Somehow, Spud seems scared when she has to go poo in her potty, preferring to keep it inside her for as long as possible. The first time she tried, she got pretty upset as she had pooed in her underpants. I reckon, this pooing-in-the-potty will somehow take a while more for her to master.

Oh well!