After my last blog entry, we decided to give it one more intensive push with Miranda. Well, we failed. But it’s okay, we’re going to try again in January. (I say January because that’s my next three day weekend. I’m on call from Christmas until New Year’s.) We did get her to pee in the potty, but only with intensive effort on our part. Here’s what we had to do:
- Get rid of Eleanor. We sent Eleanor to my mom’s house for two days, so that both of us could focus on Miranda’s potty-training.
- Watch Miranda like a hawk. Basically, one of us was never more than two feet from Miranda. This is because Miranda does not give any signs of when she needs to pee, except get a little restless. She doesn’t cross her legs, hold her crotch, or say anything (unlike Eleanor, who did all three.) When we noticed anything unusual, we immediately placed her on the potty, which leads me to the next item…
- Keep the potty within two feet of Miranda at all times. We had the potty out in the family room for two days straight.
- Follow all other instructions in the potty-training book. This meant continually talking about potty-related topics, doing “dry pants” checks every five minutes, and forced potty sitting every twenty minutes.
Well, looking back on these past two days, we realized that Miranda didn’t get any closer to being trained, but Bernard and I became highly trained at picking up on full bladder cues, stripping Miranda of her underwear and pants, and putting her on the potty in less than two seconds. Miranda didn’t care if she wet her pants, and she wasn’t happy when she peed in the potty either, since she was forced to sit there by us. We’re not sure if she still can’t tell when she needs to pee, or she just doesn’t care.
At least Bernard and I can say that we gave it a good effort. This is our defense when people ask, “Why didn’t you train them at the same time?” Believe it or not, we get this question all the time, and it’s highly annoying. We both felt immensely relieved when we put her in diapers tonight. Miranda seemed pretty happy too. She pointed at the characters on the front of her diaper and said, “Mickey Mouse! Minnie Mouse!” Now we can leave the house again!
When you do try potty training again, I read somewhere that you can try putting on underwear then the diaper over it and when she pees (if she cares) she’ll let you know immediately and that might help her with wanting to pee in the potty. But if she doesn’t care about getting her underwear and pants wet…at least this way you don’t have to worry about her wetting the floors, furniture…etc., it’ll all be contained in her diaper. I might try this approach when we decide to go full force on our potty training efforts with Jack.