I finally understand! sort of

Like I had said before I talked to anyone and everyone that I could about potty training. I noticed that once parents actually got their kids potty trained they were all like it just happened and it wasn't a big deal. While I was having several accidents a day I didn't understand how they didn't struggle like I was (except for one mom of a boy that said they replaced all the carpet in their house after their child was finally potty trained). I was always relieved when I would talk to a parent that was actually going through it or just recently declared their child trained that they seemed to have the struggles that I was. Ethan has only had three accidents in the past few weeks. Twice were while he was asleep and he didn't even know that he had them till I had woken him up. The other was he just messed around getting to the toilet and didn't get his pants down fast enough. I still nervous in declaring that he is potty trained in fear of him relapsing and for some reason reverting to the daily accidents. I can say that the potty party, stickers, bribes, nothing worked. I don't know what finally clicked for him but he is using the toilet with very little assistance if any. The only thing that we are working on now is for him to put his underwear on before he comes running out of the bathroom. We still stay in his room until he falls asleep just for our own peace of mind. Since he used to use his bed as the toilet to post pone going to sleep if we weren't in there. The nightmare of getting him from diapers to using the toilet are still with us. We probably still over react when he says that he needs to go in fear that we only have seconds to get him to the restroom. I know over time all of that will fad. Now it is time to start really working on getting Preston using the toilet. I'm hopeful that Preston is going to be a lot easier than Ethan. Preston just seems to want to do everything that Ethan does.

I guess I understand when the books, web sites, and people would say "Don't worry when they are ready they will start using the toilet". I really used to think that was the biggest load of what I just finished cleaning up off the floor from one of Ethan's accidents. When I read it while I was training I would read more of the child would let you know when they needed to use the toilet. Instead it is more like a light bulb went off in Ethan's head and he didn't fight using the toilet anymore. I would love to know what finally made the light bulb go off so that we don't have to have the same fights with Preston, or when someone asks for advice I would actually have some great nugget of information. *sigh* now if we can just get naps and bedtime to be less of a fight.

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