Wow–so potty training has been a huge challenge. Eleanor did pretty well the first day. She was dry overnight, and the second day, peed in the morning and had her first bowel movement in the potty as well. Then, later that day, she got upset because Bernard tried to put a shirt on her that she didn’t like, then, as she was having a mini-tantrum because she hated her shirt, she peed in her pants. Bernard then followed the instructions in the Azrin book, which involves having the child put on their wet underpants and “practice” running to the bathroom, sitting on the potty for one second, getting up, putting the wet underpants back on and doing this over and over ten times. Unfortunately, Bernard didn’t read the whole book, and he had Eleanor also put on her soaked pants on top of her underwear over and over, all the while screaming hysterically.
This is a major criticism of the book. A child that feels humiliated by wet pants has to put them on over and over, and also acknowledge that they aren’t dry. At one point, Eleanor was saying, “Wet pants bad.” Anyway, Eleanor has now become extremely anxious about going to the potty. She’s withholding her urine, so now I’m paranoid that she’s going to get a urinary tract infection. The overall anxiety level in the house is extremely high. And poor Miranda is essentially being ignored, and her schedule is thrown off because she has to wait every time Eleanor is sitting on the potty.
This morning we took her to school, and the two of us just hovered over her, worried that she was going to pee in her pants. Finally, the teacher just told me to leave, and tried to reassure me that Eleanor would be fine. I’m crossing my fingers.