Cue the angel hallelujah chorus. I was starting to worry whether we’d drop my son off at college wearing PJ Mask Pull-ups..okay, so that was a “wee” (PUN-INTENDED) bit dramatic. Potty training my son has been a journey, anytime anybody would even mention the word “potty”, it’d send him screaming, “noooooooooo” and running in the opposite direction. I started bribing him this summer with ice-cream cones if he would pee in the shower. That was the 1st step. Eventually, I realized that it was time for him to pee elsewhere. Our water bill was getting outrageous with all those showers!
I went to Target and bought all the cool potty-training contraptions. A $30 Paw Patrol paw kid size potty complete with flushing sounds and a sticker reward chart. Yeah—nope, that didn’t work. We watched kid cartoon shows about using the potty, we bought and read potty training books, bought cool underwear that he picked out. We tried all kinds of things. I never wanted to force it, I asked him if he wanted to use the potty, but he would always scream, “NOOOOOO” so I mostly let it go. As the stay-at-home parent, potty training mostly fell on my shoulders of things to tackle. Telling my husband that he needs to train our boy and I’ll take the girl didn’t work. Believe me, I tried 😊. I fell short of making him pee on a tree in the yard like our dog!
I was terrified of potty training, so inevitably, I procrastinated on this parenting task. I had finally run out of excuses, so we tried on a weekend after the holidays. The miraculous day when he peed on the potty started with screaming when we ripped off the “crutch” of pull ups and traded it for big boy pants. We jacked up the heat in the house and let the kid watch TV all day, drink juice, and hang out in his undies. I promised a Monster Truck toy if he peed on the potty..and that’s what actually worked. I was admittedly shocked that it worked. With that magic flush of the toilet, we celebrated, we hugged, we threw a party, it was great! We went out and filled up a giant basket of potty-training bribes including the beloved Monster Trucks, Hot Wheels & M&Ms. Happy to report that my little man is doing great. Turns out, my hubby was right (as always), my son was developmentally ready—just needed the right motivation! Truck yeah-ya’ll!