Baby Blog

To say I was overjoyed when my 17 month old baby boy went potty on the potty and not the carpet, inside the fridge (that was not a fun day) or in the litter tray, would be an understatement. When he had finished and flushed his small but oh so significant offering down the main toilet, he informed me “done.” Nik says this after he’s finished eating so I took it as a surface comment. But every day since I asked him if he needs to use the potty and he says: “no mama done potty done.”

Oh I wasn’t aware using the facilities was a once in a lifetime experience.

So here we are at an impasse. The baby knows how to go potty, the process leading up to and the after process of flushing and hand washing. He can do it he just doesn’t want to. Because apparently once was enough.

I FB’d my mommy friends and asked them how to keep up the good potty training work we had already started without being too pushy. And then I was enlightened: the reward system.

A dear friend created a reward chart for Nik on her computer consisting of a train track and his favorite thing, a choo choo train. For every time he goes potty, Nik gets to put a sticker (that he chose himself) onto the chart and also receive a small toy. My friends all informed me this was a good system with boys and you wouldn’t need too many rewards as once the process started it would only be a few days before things became habit.

Well….

I showed Nik his chart and made the silly new mommy mistake of showing him a few of his rewards which included a large plastic elephant.

“If you go potty for mommy today, you can have this.”  I placed the elephant along with the other rewards in a bag on the top of the kitchen table. As Nik is almost six inches shorter than the top of the table I thought all was well.

Silly mommy, climbing is for kids.

The next day, I was putting toys back in the toy box and absentmindedly placed the plastic elephant in the box. My husband happily asked when Nik went potty again.

“He didn’t,” I replied “he says he’s done with that.”

“So how he’d get the elephant?”

A quick question and answer session with my darling offspring and explaining to him that only boys that used the potty got rewards didn’t go quite as planned.

Nik brought the inside of his potty to me and walked out with the elephant.

Potty training is going to be a little harder than I thought.