Potty training... fail?

Sometimes I use this space just to document stuff that I am likely to forget later, and this is one of those times - definitely has been useful when I run into some issue with Emet to go back and read old blog posts about sleep, breastfeeding, etc.  So, here goes with the potty training update, if you're interested...




Eden has been out of diapers the entire month of February.  She wears pullups at night and naps, and for most outings (of which there have been few).  Otherwise, she is in underwear.

But... I am not convinced she has much control over her bodily functions yet.  So I'm feeling a bit concerned that we (I) started this process too early, and not sure where to go from here.

In my defense, at least one school of thought (embodied in a book recommended to me called "Oh Crap Potty Training") vehemently holds that (1) the whole concept of potty training "readiness" is BS and (2) it is much more difficult to potty train if you start after 2.5.  This book made a very convincing case on these points, but other schools of thought such as "once your kid is ready it happens on its own!" are also quite compelling and equally vehement that pushing potty training before a kid is ready is Bad.  Eden's teachers all seem to be of this latter school of thought, though completely supportive of our choice (contrast the preschool we planned to put Emet into before Ahava, which emphasizes early potty training starting at 12 months).

We talked about starting her because (in addition to my having read the Oh Crap book) she is verbal and able to talk coherently about the topic of pottying, because she seemed interested in going to the potty in concept when discussed in the concept of her favorite books/characters, and also admittedly because it would have been nice if she was done with the worst of the accidents before moving to the brand new house.  Then on a rare day at home, I basically took the plunge on a whim and for better or worse, we haven't turned back to diapers since.

So here is where we are a few weeks later -

She almost never uses the potty at school, and just wets herself (and has even had underwear poop accidents).  She comes home with 2-3 sets of wet clothing every day.

At home we have seen much more progress but we are able to pay more attention, keep her near potty often, and give her lots of naked time - and even so, she still has some accidents.

Plus, the way we initially got her to use the potty was to sit her there and let her watch videos.  And that method kind of got out of hand... she now spends a LOT of time sitting on the potty watching videos, and doesn't much want to sit on the potty unless she gets to watch a video.  She won't even necessarily tell us when she has used the potty during those times, because she doesn't want to stop watching the video.  The thought was, get her used to the potty using this trick, and then move on - but it probably wasn't the best idea and I am completely ashamed of the amount of screen time she's been getting lately.

The progress we have seen is that when we put her on the potty sometimes she goes pretty quickly, even immediately.  But if she doesn't go quickly, sometimes she won't go at all.  And she will really appear to be trying to go!  We count to 60 together and she tries to "squeeze."

Also, she doesn't seem to have accidents in the car unless it's a very long (hour+) drive.  Because we're not night training at this time, it's tough to know how bad she "should" have to go in the morning - many mornings she just won't go at all - she'll get up at 6:30 and then not go, stay dry all the way to school, and still not go on the potty when we get to school at 8!

Having accidents doesn't really seem to bother her much, which is another indicator that she may not be ready.  But I'm also glad, because one of the indicators that you should abort mission on potty training is that the kid is getting really upset about failing at it.  She's not, so far, though she's started to say "I don't WANT to go to the potty!" sometimes.

OK, well, there it is - I always feel a little bad when I pick up my kid at the end of the school day and she has basically wet herself three times.  If we don't see more progress at school soon maybe we'll tell school to go back to pullups for awhile, while still trying to make more progress at home.  I don't want to go back to diapers or stop using the potty, because I don't really want her to see this as an option - I wonder if we started too early, but at the same time feel like if we backtrack she may resist harder when we pick it back up.