There’s not been a lot of progress on the toileting front, to be honest, since the last time I wrote about it. We’ve been working at trying to get the Monster more “prepared” to go by himself… but every time we think we have progress, we take a few giant steps backwards from the feel of it.
For instance, recently, he’s been now-and-again inclined to go to the bathroom by himself, once we let him have a straight line to the bathroom without impediments. (We have the living room gated off, mostly due to R.) And when he’s inclined to go by himself, he’s mostly successful in using the bathroom from start to finish on his own if it’s not poop-related – there’s always the random chance he’ll come out without his pants pulled up, but at least it’s a starting point.
The problem is that he’s gone back to not necessarily warning us if he needs to poop.
This isn’t a huge problem to me when it’s first thing in the morning, since he’s still wearing a pull-up… but in the middle of the afternoon, it’s a big issue since he’s in cloth underwear. And not just because I don’t like to have to rinse out the underwear afterwards, but because he needs to learn to deal with it before it’s a problem, and something about the matter isn’t clicking with him. Moreover, it’s like he’s actively resisting going to the bathroom – we see the clear signs that he needs to go, but he’s not willing to go sit on the pot long enough.
Clearly, it’s something that we’re just not finding the right incentives for. Maybe if we go back to rewarding with M&Ms when he uses the toilet properly for all functions…