Potty Time

There was a time when I thought potty training would elude us forever. No matter what technique we tried, nothing seemed to work. I followed advice from friends, family, and neighbors and none of it seemed to make a difference. We tried various strategies and our efforts -- every last one of them -- fell flat. Chase hated to so much as sit on the potty (and we tried each and every variety of potty on the market), hated when we asked him, hated wearing anything but a diaper. Even getting him into a pull-up was a battle.

All along, a family friend kept telling us that her grandson was the same way, and then one day he just kind of "got it." She suggested that Chase would just "get it" one day, and not to push him. So we stopped making a big deal about it.We stopped suggesting the big boy underwear, eliminated the use of the timer, and kept a handy stash of pull-ups and diapers, which I was beginning to believe we'd need until Chase was at least a freshman in high school.

Much to my amazement, the "he'll just get it one day" approach seemed to do the trick. We just kind of sat back and let Chase do what he wanted to do as far as the potty was concerned (which was absolutely nothing, for quite some time). And then one morning in December, he asked to wear big boy underpants and we obliged. We reminded him every so often that he'd need to tell us if he wanted to use the potty, but the every-10-minutes strategy (one of many we'd attempted in the early days of tour efforts) had only seemed to frustrate and annoy Chase, so we were careful not to be overbearing.

It seemed like that morning, a switch went on in Chase's head. He suddenly just seemed to understand that if he had to go to the bathroom, he needed to use the potty.  By the start of Christmas break, we were using the potty exclusively. I told Andrew that by the time Chase went back to school, we'd be done with pull-ups and diapers. It wasn't that I planned to follow any strict regimen; I just had a feeling that we were done with that stuff.

And I was right. Today marks the one-month anniversary of Chase using the potty and we are so proud of him. To be honest, I was kind of dreading this -- not that I enjoyed changing diapers, mind you. Especially during the earliest days of my pregnancy, when morning sickness dominated, diaper changes were about the worst parts of my day. I was dreading what I feared would be constant interruptions --I thought we'd be using every public bathroom along the Eastern Seaboard, every five minutes, for the rest of our lives; that no drive in the car -- no matter how short in time or distance -- would take place without having to make at least four or five pit stops to use the restroom; that my life would exist on a ten-minute timer of asking Chase if he had to use the bathroom. But none of that is true. It's like one day Chase was a toddler in diapers and the next he became a regular person who uses the bathroom when he has to go.

I know a lot of people that have used a lot of varied methods for potty training, almost all of them different from the next. And each of those people SWEARS by the method that worked for them, and that's great. It just turns out that the method that worked for us was no method at all, but we're just as pleased with the results.