Pee on the armchair. Pee on the floor. Um, something a little worse in the playroom. Sweetie Pie, you think? Oh, but if that were the case. No, it’s Doodles. Doodles whose favorite person in the entire world, E., who shall henceforth be referred to as Grape for her fondness of wearing purple, is potty trained and wearing big-girl underwear. Whenever Grape is over and uses the potty, Doodles has to go too. And he does, quite successfully. So when he asked for the tenth time for big-boy underwear, I so no reason not to comply. My plan was to potty train this summer, when he was closer to three and when summer clothes are easier to remove (all those layers in winter). But if he’s asking, who am I to stop him?
So we went to Kohl’s, picked out a lovely selection of big-boy underwear (Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder, and of course, The Wiggles), got a few “treats” for successful pottying, and headed home. The underwear went on immediately and sure enough, he peed in the potty. Success! He got a Thomas the Train sticker for the lovely potty chart I made him. He was happy. I was happy.
And that worked for… exactly that one day. After that one day, he wanted to wear his underpants. Crying, desperate, want to wear underpants. But he doesn’t want to remove them to go to the potty. He wanders around in his shirt and underwear, denying all bodily functions. “Doodles, what’s that smell?”
“Nothing.”
“Doodles, I see something in your underwear. Did you poop?”
“No, no poop!” Which for some reason was much more charming when the boy wore diapers.
Puddles appear over the house. Who made them? Not Doodles!
So the answer appears to be that he’s not ready to be potty trained and we hang up the underwear for a few more months. Only he still cries and whines, “I want to wear big-boy underwear! I want to wear big-boy underwear.”
There’s no point to this story. Just a plea for help. Any suggestions?
Jeff again… hope you received my email to make this a little more personal… “V” at 2yrs has seen his sister “A” (4yrs) using her “big-girl” underwear during the day and the feel-and-learn pull-ups at night… We just started him on feel-and-learn/pull-ups during the day as his “big-boy” underwear. When he does go, the feel-and-learn will hopefully make him just uncomfortable enough (did with A but she’s a girl and V has that “I can sit in it all day” attitude going for him). We have had to keep her in the pull-ups at night and him in size 5 diapers just because of the “how could they release that much fluid while they sleep?” nights. It helps if the character on the front of the feel-and-learn can be talked up as a big thing to your guy… “A” loves Dora and it works for her.
I have no suggestions. I just wanted you to know that I feel your pain. Sydni was easy to potty train. Even though at the time I thought she was hard because she was my first. I had no idea what I was talking about back then and now it’s come back to bite me in the ass.