Potty Training.

Just when we've gotten to grips with yet another aspect of parenting, the next challenge toddles on in and decides to disturb the peace once more. The next one however, is big one. One I had very little knowledge and nil experience in. Potty training.

Of course I'd read the odd bit here & there and briefly discussed other Mum's experience but given that the majority of advice advises that children generally aren't ready to potty train before their 2nd birthday, I never thought we'd even be considering it just yet. I'd also hoped we'd skip the potty completely and go straight to the toilet but given John's current size, I'm pretty sure we'd lose him down there! However back in October, the signs of readiness rapidly appeared.

The biggest sign was John's sudden awareness of his bladder & bowel movements, teamed with his aversion to wearing nappies. From tottering on through to us, clean nappy in hand, hiding behind the dining table, pooping, then bringing his clean nappy straight over to us. Too his desire to have his nappy off for a pee - regardless of where we are! Pulling his trousers down in the park and whipping his nappy off without a care. Plus I'd find him shut away in the bathroom; trousers round his knees, pulling his clean nappy off. And after talking to his key worker at nursery, it seemed this was something he was doing there too.

Get this thing off of me!

So we took the plunge. We got a potty. (Mickey of course, y'know, anything to encourage him!). At first John wasn't keen. Other than sitting on it fully-clothed to play with his cars, it remained unused for a fair few weeks. With David due any time soon, I decided not to push the potty too much, knowing that it could all go wrong as soon as John had to adapt to the change of being a brother. But then as-if overnight, it clicked. Suddenly, John knew what the potty was for and he wanted the praise for using it. It was literally as if he woke up one day and thought, "I'm going to do this!" And then David arrived, having no affect on John's desire to use his potty.

For the last couple of months, John has remained nappy-free & bare-bummed whilst at home and I could count on my hands the amount of accidents he's had. Pees, he's mastered! We've even started to brave leaving the house in just pants (& trousers, obviously!), which so far is going great. Poops on the other hand? There's reluctance. John seems to be scared of his poops. I can honestly say that I think he'd rather hold it in for days at a time than go poop in the potty. So far I've been holding out for a few days at a time, then giving in out of fear that he'll end up constipated and putting a nappy back on him - usually resulting in a poop within 10 minutes!

It's something that I don't know how to approach so our Health Visitor is coming to offer us some advice on potty training (amongst other toddler-related things) this afternoon. But from the small amount of research I have done, it appears to be quite a common thing and widely assumed to be because wee ones see it as losing a part of them, made more traumatic by the idea of then flushing it away into the abyss. Hopefully she'll have some suggestions as right now I'm not sure he'd quite understand the common encouragement of sticker charts.

Fingers crossed we can over come the poop aversion as soon as possible though and delve straight into full blown potty training!

Have you experienced potty training with your little one? Did you encounter any resistance?