Baby A started potty-training last April, when she was about
27 months old. While those first couple
of weeks were very “hands on”, she only had a handful of accidents. After a couple of months, though, she started
to have little mishaps here and there…just enough to wet the seat of her
panties…but the “regression” felt very frustrating. And she never seemed upset with herself (like
I later experienced with Baby B).
Baby A is a go-er and a do-er. My gut was that she just didn’t want to take
the time away from play to go to the potty…until she realized it was too late.
Whereas I hadn’t used any type of reward system during her
training (other than the lure of the “big girl privilege” of getting to flush
the potty), I decided to try a sticker card.
At the end of every day, if she’d stayed clean and dry, she
could pick out a sticker to put on a card that was hanging on the refrigerator.
Viola!
Once she finally earned her first sticker, she was hooked.
And Baby B was so proud to begin earning stickers herself a
few months later.
We’ve been using our sticker cards for about a year
now. I won’t say we never have accidents…it’s
still the same issue (I think) as we were having a year ago…a certain someone
who is occasionally having too much fun doing other things to address her
business on time…but all in all, we’re doing well.
It’s time to wean off the sticker cards.
I told the girls a few weeks ago that we would earn stickers
until their half-birthday, on July 5. At
that point, they’ll officially be “big girls”.
“Keeping clean and dry all day is just what big girls
do. Mommy and Daddy stay clean and dry,
and we don’t get stickers at night.”
The girls seem to understand what’s coming, and they haven’t
launched any formal protests.
A couple of days ago, I thought I’d offer something to mark
the retirement of the sticker cards. I
proposed we’d go buy some new panties. “Won’t
that be exciting???”
“Yeah!!!” Baby A agreed.
“Will they be BIG panties???” she asked.
“BBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIIGGGG???”
Daddy and I couldn’t help but cackle.
I guess she’s taking my emphasis on being a “big” girl very
seriously!
2 comments:
Oh, I love the BIG panties :)
You know I call mine babies and K keeps reminding me, "we're BIG kids" but BIIIIIGGGGG is stretched out to about 3 syllables :)
I'm so sick of this big girl business! What happened to our babies?!
Although I do love, and cringe, every time Claire corrects her sister with "that's not what big girls do!"
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