So, as I said in an earlier post, Lily has been peeing on the potty for quite a while. At the end of the Christmas holidays we decided to give potty training a try, we will call that Potty Training 1.0. Version 1.0 did not go so well. The idea was that we would put Lily into her big girl panties and she would have accidents until she learned to tell us that she needed the potty. I was also trying to keep on her to get her to sit on the toilet every hour or so. After the first hour, she was dry, I took her up to the potty, she had a pee, life was good. After about 30 minutes more, she had her first accident. No big deal, accidents happen. Took her up to sit on the potty, get cleaned up and put on some dry panties. Brought her back downstairs and about 10 minutes later she had another accident. The morning continued like this through about 6 pairs of panties until we finally felt too stressed out to make it work for her. We put her back into a diaper and that was the end of it.
Since our attempt at Potty Training 1.0 Lily has been consistently peeing on the potty before her nap and waking up from her nap dry. But at any other time of the day if asked to use the potty she refuses. She has even been known to tell us when she is peeing on the couch, or in her bed, etc. One day she even told us, “I love peeing in my diaper!” This was not a happy moment for me, a little funny, but not happy. So, this is where my thoughts on Potty Training 2.0 came from. I started thinking about why version 1.0 didn’t work for us. We started feeling stressed out and that just made the whole experience worse for everyone. So, for version 2.0 I have decided to ween her off diapers. On day 1 she will wear panties for a couple hours, on day 2 we will try to keep her in panties until after her nap, on day 3 we will try to keep her in panties until Daddy gets home from work or just before, on day 4 we will try to keep her in panties until bed time, and we will stick with panties until bed time until she starts to wake up in the mornings dry.
I am going to try to follow her lead. If she seems to be stressing out about the accidents I will put her in a diaper sooner, if she is doing really well in her panties I will keep her in panties a little longer. Mostly, I am going to try for the most stress-free training I can manage. Hopefully, the couple of months that we have waited between version 1.0 and version 2.0 will help with how well she copes with it as well.
Today is day 1 of version 2.0. At the end of each day I will write a new post about how the day went and how I intend to proceed the next day.