Potty Training Robert

Robert is 3 years and 7 months old.  He definitely has his own unique personality. We have introduced the idea of going potty a couple of time with him before but he wasn't interested and it was too difficult for us.  So, I figured that when Hailey goes off to school, it'll be easier to focus on potty training him.

However, two or three weeks before Hailey went off to school, Robert wanted to have a potty party with Hailey.  We had to make the rule of "you can only be in the bathroom if you are using it", so Robert wanted to use his frog potty (thank you Eva and Morgan!) while Hailey was on the big potty.  Well, learning by example is the best way, and if he is ready then I should just let him.  He also gets terrible diaper rashes which makes it even harder for us to change him because he hurts so bad. 

So we pulled out his Thomas underwear again and he did reasonable well for the first couple of days.

We started off with giving him candy everything he went and made a big deal with it.  I learned my lesson with Hailey and always gave him candy when he asked for it.   I took candy rewards away from Hailey too quickly and it made potty training very difficult.  We read books together during potty time and he generally spent a good 1/2 hour in there playing with bath toys.

After a little while, he was very resistant to going potty and didn't care at all about candy. So, we made a potty chart with Happy faces and sad faces.  He is very expressive on how he feels and will often tell us we made he soo sad! (This saying got to be very annoying because we want him to own up to his own feelings and stop blaming us. So every time time he told us that we made him sad, we would say we could get a piece of candy then.  After a week or so, he didn't say it as much. However, he just moved to a new phrase instead "Stop IT!") Anyways...since he cared a lot about how his feelings are I thought that putting happy faces with successes and sad faces with accidents will kind of help motivate him to use the potty more. Also, if he got all happy faces in one day, then he can get ice cream.

This is the chart from the first week we used it. It helped me know generally want times he would go potty so I could make it more routine. We time to have potty time, when he wakes up, after breakfast, after morning snack, after lunch, after afternoon snack, after dinner, and before bed.  He generally went 8 times a day and by the end of the week, he earned 4 ice cream trips in a row. We were very proud of our big boy. However, it's hard to have that many ice cream trips, so we added a money jar to keep track of the successes. He would get one penny for peeing, two for pooping, one for taking care of his potty, one if he went in the big potty instead, one for pulling up his pants, one for washing his hands, and an extra one if he just listened to his body instead of us telling him to go.  The goal was to get 100 pennies so he could pay for his own ice cream.  It took him two weeks to get that much and then after he could see how the money thing worked, it only took a week to get the next ice cream trip.

For some strange reason, Robert has stopped progressing. He started refusing to go when we asked, he refusing to clean his potty, he refusing to pull up his pants and wash his hands.  He know how to do all these step, we aren't asking anything too hard of him, but he just stopped doing it.  We've been taking a Love and Logic parenting class that's offered by the school district for free. We got the idea that he should start paying us for the things we do for him.  Robert didn't care.  We are lucky if he'll even go potty four times a day and most of the time it's a fight.  He doesn't care if he is wet or dirty and refusing to do anything about it.  We've been told that if he cleans up after his own mess, he'll go in the potty.  We've send him to time out until he cleans it up, and he will stay there for 30 minutes at least just lying on the floor.  We take things away but still he doesn't care.  When he's really messy and needs a bath, I put cool water for him to use to wash himself off and it still doesn't motivate him to use the potty on his own accord.

Potty training is the most frustrating thing we have had to deal with as parents so far (I don't even want to think about teenagers) and it is even more difficult with Robert has very defiant personality on top of it.  We have tried changing our parenting techniques to help us with Robert in general. We have read Love and Logic books and are taking the class.  We've also researched 1-2-3 Magic and use a combination of the two.  The biggest thing we have trouble with is getting him to DO something. We have also looked into allergies and did the Fiengold Diet for 2-3 months. In the diet we took out all artificial preservatives, coloring, and flavor.  There wasn't as big of a change that we expected to see and it's very difficult to cook all the time.  I learned a lot from that and it helped me define what I want a healthy diet to be like but now is just not the time.  I'm at the point where I'm just too frustrated to deal with him effectively.  I really want to quit potty training so I can just focus on his regular behavior and be consistent with effective parenting techniques instead of the added stress of potty training.  However, since he decided to start potty training, I can't get him in diapers again. 

I love my big boy so much and there are a lot of sweet things that he does.  He has a very kind heart and can make up wonderful stories.  He reminds me to be a nice mommy and how Jesus is sad when I yell.  I want to be a better mommy and take good care of him.  He loves to be held and wants to help me. For the most part he plays very well with Hailey and looks up to her a lot.  Of course there is still fighting but in the afternoon they just play together or draw together and I get a nice break. He just fights being controlled and that's what I'm trying to do with potty training.

So I figure I have a few options.
1) stop potty training and put him back in pull ups or diapers. (I needed to get Nathan's approval on this one and he wants pull ups instead of diapers so Robert will stay independent.  It makes sense but Robert HATES pull ups more than anything.)
2) continue with the fight and force set potty times on him until "something" clicks and he just goes on his own.
3) keep him in underwear and completely back off, make it all up to him with gentle reminders but no serious pushes to the potty.

I think that option I'm going to do now is number 3! He has never had more than 4 accidents in a day and generally only has an accident in the afternoon.  I would rather do a little more laundry than fight him until we are both blue in the face.  He is also completely night trained and in the 3 months that we've been working with him, I've only had to change his bed twice.  Nathan's around in the morning and at night to help with those potty times (Robert responds more to Nathan than to me). So there is only one or two potty times he should have while I'm "in charge". 

I hate potty training but I want to remember this struggle to help guide me for future kids.  I think  Hannah will be the easiest to potty train and when we are both ready (most likely in a year from now when I'm done nursing the baby) we will do the Potty Party Idea from "Potty Train your Child in Just One Day by Teri Crane." I think that approach will work best with her.