Are we there yet?

Usually "Are we there yet?" is a question from the child to the parents, but this time it is my question. The question refers to potty training, and I hope the answer is yes. After more than six months of intense effort and frustration, Evan appears to be potty-trained by meeting the following criteria:

A. Wears underwear both day and night
B. Has been accident-free since Thanksgiving (at least)
C. Tells his parents that he needs to use the potty
D. Takes himself to the potty if a short enough one is available
E. No longer requires reminders from parents to remain accident-free

Potty-training Evan turned out to be our biggest parenting challenge to date. All sorts of other adjustments such as giving up the bottle and pacifier, changing child care providers, and moving to a new house were so easy with him, but potty-training required an immense amount of creativity, patience and perseverance. With another boy to potty train in the future, I felt the need to document our experience.

Our potty-training efforts began in earnest when Evan turned 2.9 years old and began preschool. The preschool did not require that Evan be potty-trained, but the teachers would encourage him to use the potty. As Evan met all criteria for potty-training readiness except interest in the potty, we also started to encourage him to use the potty at home. Within a very short time, Evan was doing so well with potty-training at preschool that he began wearing underwear to preschool. Despite having extremely few accidents at preschool, Evan continued to have an extreme aversion to using the potty at home for months. Experienced parents gave us many ideas, some of which worked for a few days or played a role in our eventual success. Other ideas might be helpful to other parents and maybe for Liam in a few years. Here are some of my favorites:

• Declare the home and yard a pants-free zone
• Do away with pull-ups and deal with accidents
• Set a timer that tells your child when to use the potty instead of your telling him/her
• Place cheerios in the toilet and have your child aim at the cheerios
• Use the firefighter theme as encouragement
• Have the child sit backwards on the toilet holding on to the cover for balance

Of course, we also tried potty charts and all kinds of prizes, but nothing was working so we gave everyone a break from training efforts.

Then, one day Evan asked if we could play outside, and I said, "We can go outside if you use the potty first." To my surprise, he agreed and complied. We tried this contingency method with other activities that Evan enjoyed, and Evan would use the potty with little argument. It did take a lot of foresight and ingenuity to create enough incentives throughout the day, but at least we did not have to buy the every Thomas the Tank Engine train or foster a candy addiction. We did find the method most successful when Evan came up with the activity on his own.

In the past few weeks, we have had increasing difficulty getting Evan to respond to our reminders to use the potty even with the contingency method. At the same time, we noticed that he was finally telling us when he needed to go to the bathroom. So we have now taken the big step of doing away with the reminders. So far, the results have been very positive. (Of course, it helps that Evan has the bladder control of an astronaut.)

I always said that we would have a big celebration when Evan was finally potty-trained, but I don't want to jinx myself. I think I will just happily savor the end of potty negotiations and tensions until Liam's time comes. That time will be hear before I know it.