It’s actually been two weeks since the last time I discussed how this is going.
We’ve been having a mixed bag with the progress on teaching the Monster to use the potty – there’s days where we’ll hit a few times in a row, and then we’ll have a whole string of misses, with him wetting/soiling himself without getting him to the potty in time.
And yes, I know that this is par for the course when it comes to toilet training. We didn’t expect otherwise, to be honest.
What we didn’t expect was the email from his teacher yesterday.
[The Monster] had a bathroom accident today, but this is not the main reason why I am writing. He actually asked to go to the bathroom using his words “It’s time to go to the bathroom!”. He went to the bathroom right after lunch and was successful in using the bathroom, I did not expect him to have the need to go to the bathroom after our quiet time, that was approximately 45 minutes after. But he said “it’s time to go to the bathroom” with a nice and loud voice enough to get my attention twice, however, the pants already started to get wet before he reached the bathroom, he was able to finish urinating in the toilet (maybe 15 % percent in his pants and 85% in the toilet. I observed that he was following the words that I used when I asked him to go to the bathroom like saying “It’s time to go to the bathroom!”.. I will change it to “I need to go to the bathroom” to let him address himself properly.
Now, aside from the fact that it’s one of the rare ‘misses’ while he’s at school (then again, he also drinks less at school), it’s incredible to see that he actually indicated verbally that he needed to go. (One wonders if, had she gotten him going the first time he asked, he wouldn’t have wet himself. Alas.) It’s a very good change, and an indication that he’s at least aware of his needs and getting some realization of when he needs to go.
On the other hand, this just reinforces that we really do need to transition him from pull-ups at home – I have to wonder if they’re diaper-like enough that he’s not registering that they’re underpants, no matter what we call them. I’ve suggested to the wife that we get a few more pairs of the rubber training pants to put on over them, so that we can actually switch him to cloth.. and we’ll go from there…
That is AWESOME! Amazing progress!