Since I'm on summer break and Addison has been showing signs of being ready to potty train, I figured it would be a good time to try! I did my reading before starting because besides potty training the dog 5 years ago I had no clue what to do. So I did my reading and put a few teacher tricks of mine with what I read to come up with a plan. We are still working on it, but Addison is doing great!
Here's our set up...Addison has her potty, which sings to her when she goes in it. We have a stack of books as a distraction in case we have to sit on the potty for a few minutes. We also have 2 different posters. One is an interactive poster that Addy puts a sticker on each time she goes to the bathroom. Each time she goes, she gets a sticker and a jelly bean (candy of her choice). She gets three stickers, but on the 4th she gets something from the prize box. I let her go through the $1 bin at Target to make the prize box. The other poster says, "who do you want to call?" When she goes in the potty, I let her call someone to tell th about it.
We also got some big girl panties ( sorry the picture is sideways!) Addison chose Doc Mcstuffins. Basically here is what I did in the beginning. I let her choose anything that was desirable...the target $1 bin for the prize box, jelly beans for the treat, elmo stickers for the poster, pretty big girl panties and lots and lots of juice/liquid that is her favorite.
The first day of potty training I attacked it hard! We stayed in the house for about 4 hours, kept it quiet (no tv) and I started showing her how the potty worked...all while she had a cup of her favorite juice! I wanted to really focus on it the first day very hard so that she would start catching on. Repetition, repetition, repetition!
I showed her how the baby doll drank juice and how she went to the potty, etc. then every 15 minutes i set the timer and I took her to the potty to give it a try. When it took a while, we read books that I had stashed in the bathroom and when she went in the potty I went crazy and made a HUGE deal about it so that Addison got excited. Then we flushed, washed our hands, got the jelly bean and sticker, then called someone from our list. I pretty much repeated te same process over and over every 15 minutes for 4 hours. I did make sure I have Addison salty snacks like pretzels so that she would be thirsty and drink more.
After Addison went potty 4 times she chose a painting kit from the prize box. We spent time painting in between our trips to the bathroom. It kept her entertained, but not too distracted from the task of using the potty.
Here's Addison putting one I her stickers on her chart
We also played dress up, read books, sang songs, played Legos, blew bubbles, worked a puzzle and did lots of different activities that kept her busy but focused.
After the 4 hours, addy took a nap and so did I. I was exhausted!
She's making lots of progress! In fact, last night after gymnastics she told me she needed to pee-pee, so I took her in the bathroom and sure enough, she needed to pee. I was so proud of her that when we it home I have her every sticker we had-
Kidding, totally kidding (this is what her BB let her do) but honestly, I'm so proud of the progress she's making, but potty training is not for the faint of heart!
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