So the latest update is that Kwabena now is 90% potty trained at home….when he’s NOT wearing a diaper…. (when he’s wearing a diaper, he will totally poop and pee in it).
The part that is challenging about diaper training, however: I’m trying to do one thing here at home, and Miss Marilyn is trying to do another thing.
You see, at daycare, Kwabena still wears diapers and pull-ups, but she DOES offer the potty to him (he’s more likely to pee, not poop). It’s not realistic to think that she will put him in underwear until he is able and willing and fully able to verbalize to her that he needs to use the potty. She keeps him in diapers and pull-ups, and my belief about diapers and pull-ups is that as long as a child wears them, it only reinforces that they can poop and pee in them.
At home, as you know, Kwabena was trained initially by given the freedom to roam around diaperless. He quickly made the connection. The challenge at that point was getting him to understand that when he is wearing underwear and/or pants, that he can’t pee in them. It took a little time, but eventually, he now knows, simply because I reinforced it with him, as well as take “potty breaks” with him.
Lately Kwabena has learned to get to the potty when wearing underwear and/or pants.
But now Miss Marilyn is asking to me to put him in pull-ups while at home, and I don’t want to.
It would be a step in the wrong direction. He obviously understands the difference between diapers and underwear now. So, the next thing will be for me to start venturing outside of home in underwear (and 2 changes of clothes just in case!! LOL). Right now when we go to the store or some place, I tell Kwabi that I am putting a “bye-bye diaper” on him. I believe that once he starts getting truly “getting it” that outside of home he has to use the potty, too, then he will be ready for underwear at daycare.
In the meantime, though, I will not revert to pull-ups while at home. I hope I am not truly confusing Kwabena, though!
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