The Georgous

Georgia’s words — Pot- tee…. and mng-mng… both mean wanting to sit on the potty.

How wonderful if we didn’t have to buy nappies anymore!
I’ve been working hard towards that goal and Georgia now does generally understand the concept of the potty for both poo-ing and pee-ing. Also help by a great Usborne book Baby’s Potty.
 The poo-ing part is easy — she has always hated having a dirty nappy — since she was hours old – she would scream until the nappy was changed. So convincing her that the potty was the best place for poo-ing was easy. She has been doing it pretty consistently with help since she was about 4 months old.

Now the pee-ing part — that’s the tricky one. She started at about 16 months to indicate when she wanted to pee by pointing to her nappy; on mornings (before nursery), evenings and weekends she quite happily wear training pants and I could often catch her before any accidents.

Nursery sadly however was not willing to keep up with the potty training, well they were, but on their terms i.e. sitting her on the potty before every nappy change, which meant that she started hating the potty and not wanting to sit on it at all. So rather than have her not sit on the potty at all, I decided that potty training would just happen at home when I could.

All is not swimmingly well though….

Georgia will willingly use the potty to poo but will actively fight any attempt to sit her on it to pee. When I tell her that she has to wear ‘big girl pants’ and tell me when she wants to pee-pee, she actually shakes her head ‘No’ and asks for a nappy.

But she will, when dressed up and ready for bed, in her bed-time delaying tactics, say that she needs her potty; so off with the pyjama pants, off with the nappies and on the potty…. I suppose it adds up to another few minutes of staying up!

Now here’s the dilemma — do I give in to delaying tactics or do I reinforce potty training?

© 2007, Li-ling. All rights reserved.