I was determined that our son be potty trained sooner rather than later. During the course of our potty training efforts he had in fact used the potty to pee every so often and we even got him to poop on the toilet once, but our efforts were met with inconsistency. I knew that our son was perfectly aware of when he had to go to the bathroom. He did have some interest in using the toilet on and off for the past six months. During that time I offered him a reward, a piece of organic chocolate (I tried organic cranberries and he liked them but not enough to go potty for them), for going pee or poop in the toilet, but even that did not hold his attention for very long.
I took the week before Easter to get myself organized for some intense potty training. I made sure he had plenty of underwear, I got bars of organic chocolate and broke them into pieces for his reward, and I set up the child sized potty in the bathroom. On the following Monday, we began our potty training efforts once again. As soon as he woke up, I put him on the potty. He peed and received a piece of chocolate. I dressed him in just a shirt and underwear. I thought that if he went without pants, he would be more aware of when he had to go to the bathroom. Our first real test came during breakfast; it became obvious that our son needed to poop. We asked him if he did and he said yes. We told him that he needed to try to go poop in his new potty. He was adamantly against the idea and started to get whiny telling us, “No, no I don’t want to go poop in the potty…”
(To be continued …)