Potty Training Tips: What Worked For Kian Part 1

Posted by Vulnadia on Jun 26, 2010 at 12:06 PM All kids are different. Sadly, that's just part of what makes potty training so difficult. First off, most people don't understand that kids must be ready before this can work no matter WHAT anyone tells you, and no matter HOW terrible those looks are when they ask you why your kid hasn't mastered the art of the potty yet! Then there is the whole you have to have them potty trained for this or that to happen at daycare/school push. My whole take on it is that kids have to be able to communicate to you their feelings and show an understanding of what it is that you want & need for them to do before this can even begin to work! With Vivienne, she watched her Potty Power motivational DVD and had one accident to figure out what she SHOULDN'T do, and just did it from that point forward, no looking back, no accidents and even keeps her pull-up dry at night but knows she has it as insurance in case something happens. Kian is a different little guy. He sees things differently not only because he is a boy, but he is a pirate guy, too. He and his brother quickly correlated the whole flushing potty swirl with the whirlpool scenes from Pirates of the Carribean movies, so Pirate Potty lingo was born. Kids will call it what THEY want to call it. You can try to set the lingo yourself, but ultimately it will fall to what THEY understand and relate to. In Kian's case, Pirate Potty Lingo was the way to go. We have Pirate water and Pirate stinkies. The toilet paper became a Pirate ship for all intents and purposes (not to be confused with the more adult version that some have mistaken it for in public restrooms as of late, that story comes later!) Kian's biggest problem wasn't that he didn't know what it was that was expected of him (he was the first to make stinkies in the potty EVER at my house being that he absolutely HATES to be dirty & has since birth.) It was more his fear of failure and need to succeed. His diaper is his security of sorts, his way of not having any accidents and if he does, he has the insurance that it wont get him totally filthy. That being said, we have been trying and trying to figure this out for months on how to best approach this. We thought we had it, but then he was doin his little guy thing one day and slipped (after all it's difficult to balance a tiny hiney on a potty seat while holding a chip bag in one hand and an icee in the other!) For the solution, see Part 2!