After a long struggle with this yesterday and still having initial problems in the morning, I got desperate. I had heard a method where you use dolls to practice peeing on the potty and even give them candy for succeeding. I needed some way to show him peeing in the potty was actually good as he didn't believe even our biggest congratulations at his drips, so the dolls came out.
Or rather his favorite monkey. I got a cup, hid it behind the monkey and the monkey sat down on the potty and "peed". We both congratulated monkey on a job well done and gave him some candy. I noticed my son's eyes lighting up, but wasn't sure if it worked. Until he ran to his bedroom and started bringing out more animals. We had several pees and then had him take a turn. And it worked! Sort of...
Now he'll pee on demand, but just one squirt. Obviously he has more than just one squirt in that bulging bladder. After working all morning trying to get him to pee more, we got monkey to potty in squirts and then give more when mommy asked. No luck.
In the end, we spent the majority of the day with me demanding that he stay on the potty until he had emptied it, not just popping right back up. He played the drama king and screamed the whole way, but I noticed when he screamed he inadvertently peed. So I just encouraged the squirts and celebrated them and turned a deaf ear to his screams. At that point, his bladder needed release any way we could get it. I figured he wasn't actually being harmed in any way or being made to sit too long, in fact, I wasn't even scolding him, but being upbeat and encouraging. He just flat out didn't want to and I told tough. Sometimes our kids need to hear tough.
This went on most of the day. Finally, he woke up from second nap around five and we went at it again. Except this time no screaming...and this time he would pee long strings and more if I asked! He did great all night with some initial accidents where he'd start before he realized, but we got the rest in the potty. I was more than happy with that!
I have learned again and again when you feel discouraged and sure it won't work to keep going as you're about to make a breakthrough. I felt like quitting all day and am so glad I didn't!
Now that we can actually pee in the potty now I hope to make some bigger progress. However, after yesterday's traumatic day, I am still sitting here typing putting off the morning change over to undies. :)
One more thing, I have always trained with a timer, but this time I found it just didn't work. Since we were dealing with a still full bladder, he needed to go more often than I could time. I learned to watch his signals instead. It took a day or so, but I'm finally understanding his signals to pee. Eventually we'll switch over to a timer, but for now I found this is working great! Just takes moms full attention 24/7...
Ok, no more procrastinating. Off to start Day #3!
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