CalMeacham Attempts to Toilet Train his Daughter

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Background:

My daughter s almost three years old. She has been suggesting that she is ready to make the leap to “big girl pants” (underwear, that is, not diapers). She has been reading “Once Upon a Potty” as if it is a textbook. My wife, Mrs. Cal, has been dropping heavy hints about how wonderful this would be, and how our daughter will get M&Ms if she successfully uses the potty. We have a collection of foil stars and a chart with the days of this four day weekend marked off.
CalMeacham knows math, physics, mythology, history, and bad movies. But, Miz Scarlett, he don’t know nothin’ about toilet trainin’ babies. Fortunately, Mrs. Cal, among her other achievements, is a professionally trained nanny. Cal always thought, as long as they were having kids, that it was good to have a Mary Poppins in the family. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cal is suffering from a recent root canal, a sinus headache, and PMS. At the moment, she is a homicidal Mary Poppins.

Add to this mix our cats. Midnight is our major cat, and industrial-strength cat. People invariably react to Midnight by saying, “My God, that’s a Big Cat!” Midnight has been toilet trained, but expresses her indignation by peeing on the basement floor.

Midnight has reason to be indignant. Since our other cat died a few month ago of mouth cancer, we have gone to the animal shelter and returned with TWO cats – Clarence and Lotta. These are incredibly sweet-natured beasts, but Mdnight regards our obtaining them as treason. She has laryngitis from growling at these interlopers, and doesn’t like anything that adds strain to the household.

f course, I hought this would be an easy effort. Toilet Training isn’t hard, right?

Right?

To be continued.

2

Going through the same with my 3 year old boy. Fun, fun fun.

3

Have patience, be consistant and when she does her business make a huge deal about it!!

That’s my advice. Good Luck!

4

…about women who couldn’t toilet train their husbands??..

…at least as far as putting the seat down…

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yes we did… I suppose my advice could work on a man too!! :wink:

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My three year old son trained in a week’s time in May. We let him run around the house naked and he figured it out pretty quickly :slight_smile:

Make a big deal about successes, and don’t scold over accidents - worked for us!

–tygre

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My girls were easy to potty train. I bought them “big girl” underwear and made a huge fuss about them. One or two accidents later, voila!

My sister-in-law trained her son by letting him run around nekkid, with a training toilet in the middle of the room. She gradually moved the toilet to the bathroom.

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Part 2

On Saturday morning my wife gave my daughter The Talk.

“You’re going to wear your Big Girl Pants. So you’ll tell Mommy and Daddy when you have to go to the potty, Okay?”

Since we had to be home anyway, I took advantage of the opportunity to do work around the house. Killed the weeds, trimmed th hedges, washed the house. Did I call this thread CalMeacham Attempts to Toilet Train his Daughter? lied. I let Mrs. Cal do it. I’m a coward.

Midnight, our indusrial-strength cat, started the weekend out right by peeing on the floor near the cat boxes. Clarence and Lotta, the newbies, have extremely inefficient digestive tracts. They inhale food and produce prodigious quantities of waste. Midnight hardly eats anything, but retains it. She is the Camryn Manheim of cats. When she sees the state of the litter boxes after Clarence and Lotta et through with them, she retaliates by eeing n the floor. This does not set a good example for our daughter.

Our daughter makes her first error, peeing in her pants. My wife reassures her that accidents happen, rinses out her underwear, cleans the floor with Febreze and cleaner, and puts new Big Girl Pants on our daughter. Cal is blissfully doing yard work.

Some time later we have our first success! Our daughter has pooped in he potty. As she got up, she failed to notice that she was still peeing. But my wife cleans it up and instructs our daughter. It is a qualified success.

We make a very big deal over (as so many of you have suggestd), and figure that we are well on our way. This will be easy.

Of course, it wasn’t. The Universe was just setting us up.

(To be Continued)

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We are going through the same fun, fun, fun time. Well, currently I am in the surrender position, the kid has won. He was toilet trained for a week or two with very little drama or fuss and then he got up one morning, refused the potty, the toilet and a nappy.

Twenty-six hours later he cut loose. I think any kid who can go twenty-six hours without evacuating either sphincter is to all intents and purposes in total control of their body. Unfortunately it seems he was just proving a point about who is in charge of it… I thought it was going well up until he did that.

He’s in nappies until he changes his mind

Primaflora who had thought the first kid was a challenge to toilet train. Hah!

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We’re on the last phase of this process - getting my daughter to get through the night without wetting her bed. Once again, fun, fun , fun.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

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Can’t help you with the sweetie pie, hon, but the cat will eventually get used to the new “siblings.” It might help to get another cat box, so Midnight can have his own toilet.
Sometimes this helps, I hear. How you get the other cats to not use his/hers, is a ? I don’t have an answer to. Maybe you could put it in a place where only he/she has access, although in my house this would not be possible. Good luck, my friend-with both of your problems!

BTW, if you have recently changed your cat litter, please switch back. Mine were annoyed when I started using a new brand, and did the same thing.

Scotti

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Part 3

Sunday was the Worst Day
It started out with the cats getting Mr. Cal out of bed at 5 AM to feed them. They know better than to try waking me up, since nothing short of a hermonuclear detonation will rouse me. One time our Carbon Monoxide Detector went off because the battery was starting to fail, sending out a whine that would crack plaster. It never fazed me. It took Mrs. Cal pulling on me to get me up.

The cas woke her, she fed them and crept back into bed, only to be awakened by our daughter crawling into our bed at 5:30. This is not normal behavior for her, but this was not a normal weekend. We didn’t really get back to sleep, so an hour and a half later we stumbled into the living room. We put cartoons on to keep our daughter amused. My wife gave her The Talk again. I did my part, falling asleep.

I was awakened suddenly by Mrs. cal yelling at me, telling me that our daughter had et her pants AGAIN, and I was supposed to be keeping an eye on her. Evidently I missed the first pants wetting earlier that morning. Our daughter had managed towalk while peeing, wetting an entire swath f hallway.

To top things off, Midnight, in retaliation for not getting walk, had peed by the front door. It asn’t even nine o’clock yet.
(To be continued)

PS. – We do have multiple cat boxes. We maintain THREE, in fact. When I say that Clarence and Lotta were prodigious in their output, I am not kidding.

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Sounds like it’s time to get Clarence & Lotta to the vet to find out if a change of diet will help their little problem. Sorry, can only offer sympathy (if not empathy, being kidless) on the other issues. Good luck!

Catrandom

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Part Four

Our daughter filled in her Sunday by drawing. She pulled ut the washable (thank god) markers and a pad of paper and proceded to do a series of portraits. “This is your sister, Daddy!” she said, handing one to me. M joy was tempered by the fact that she had gotten marker al over the carpeting washable, washable) and all over her face and hands. She looked like a Hollywood Indian in war paint.
I spelled my wife, who napped. Then I cleaned the gutters, re-cemented he foundation, and went to the store for groceries and supplies.WhenI got back my wife was furious. Her eyes were starting look like Christopher Lloyd’s at the end of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”.
“She DEliberately peed on the floor!” She said. “I asked her if she had to pee and she said NO! and then she peed right on the floor! I came that close…!”

It was not a good day. We cleaned the carpet again. Mrs. Cal had a new talk with our daughtr. “Are you SRE you are ready? Do you want to go back to diapers?” But our daughter answered that she wanted to stay with her Big Girl pants.

We put her back into diapers for bed.

I learned that Mrs. Cal’s Nanny training did NOT include toilet training. It was Amateur Night in the CalMeacham househld. Perhaps tomorrow – Monday – would be better.

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Part Five

Early the next morning our daughter andered into our bedroom again. I decided to let Mrs. Cal sleep, so I shepherded our daughter nt the living room. She pulled out the DVD of “The Land Before Time” and asked me to put it on. Actually, she knows how to do most of this herself. She can pull a DVD disc out of the box faster than I can. And she’s OBSESSED with The Land Before Time. I wanted to be a paleontologist, myself, as a child, so maybe this is genetic.

So I put it on and look through the morning paper. Midnight has not peed on the floor this morning. Maybe this is auspicious.I hope so.

Mrs. Cal gets up and has breakfast. I tell her maybe she should take a break this morning – she’s been looking after our daughter all this time, I should do it for now. Mrs. Cal is looking very frazzled. he asks our daughter if she wants to put on her Big Girl Pants, or to stay in a smelly, dirty diaper. Our daughter ignores this.

Mrs. Cal agrees to go out shopping – or at least walkking around. “Do whatever you want with her,” she says, pointing at our daughter. “Diaper, underwear, naked, I don’t care.”

“Do you want to put on your Big Grl Pants?” I ask my daughter, now that my wife is gone.
“No,” she replies. We finish watching the movie. We play with our sewing kit. Eventually I put on her Big Girl Underwear, and there is no objection. She does not pee in them.

My wife comes home, remarks that I’ve succeeded in etting our daughter in underwear. She begins making cookies for a barbecue we’ve been invited to. She pulls out a bag of chocolate chips and makes some remark about them.Our daughter’s ears perk up.
"Mommy, I want chocolate. Another thing she inherited from my wife. Mrs. Cal’s eyebrow goes up, and she grins. She has a handle.
“I’ll tell you what,” se says. “You go to potty and I’ll give you chocolate chips.”
“NO!” says my daughter, indignantly. “Give me chocolate!”
“Use the potty and you can have some,” my wife repeats, calmly.

Our daughter is the picture of frustration and righteous indignation. She crosses her arms, hard, and stalks around the room. Uh, oh, I think. This s NOT a good confrontation. This is a confrontation that breas wills. No good can come f this.
The storm clouds brew over my daughter’s head. Suddenly she reaches a decision and pulls down her pants with a decisive motion. Or, at least, she would have if she weren’t hampered with a three-year-old’s dexterity. I help her. She sits down hard on the potty and stands up a moment later. Nothing, I think.

I’m wrong. The pot is full of surprisingy dark liquid.

General rejoicing.

(To be continued)

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Pee-pee in the potty!

::Doing the happy Daddy dacnce::

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Frackem, sackem, piece of shit…

::Doing the happy Daddy dance::

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Cal…

It sounds like you have enough urine in your house to…well…it sounds like you have a bunch.
Bribes…or rewards are very effective. Our oldest boy nearly potty trained himself. Our middle child, had a tougher time of it…(in a hospital for a good portion or his toddlerdom) and our youngest (daughter) was a breeze.

We did use rewards for everyone of them.
To echo the previous advice, make a hugh Hollywood production for hitting the target…and ignore the failures…(for potty training anyways)

Peeingly urine, JimmyNipples

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My paternal grandmother, mother of 14 kids, told me the only advice I needed for raising my kids is: “they are all different”. How true, especially when it comes to potty training.

All three of my kids ran around naked for the first couple of years; in fact, they were known as those American naked kids…

My oldest decided one day that diapers or pullups were for babies. He decided he was ready to sleep thru the night without pissing in bed. One accident was enough to shore up his determination.

My twins were completely different; part was due to physiology - twins, for some reason, potty train later. Both were in nighttime diapers until almost 6 years old.

They did most of their peeing outside; my daughter figured out how to elegantly “sit back and pee without getting wet”.
Peer pressure worked wonders on doing number two in the toilet.

So the gist of this message is: adjust your method to your kid’s personality. Bribe when kid is ready to be bribed. Wait until your kids decides [this might be a luxury]. Figure out the time cycle and remind the kids that he or she might want to go to the toilet [I’ve tried using this on the dogs as well…].

Well, enough SDMB and back to painting.

Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness
…Oscar Wilde

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Part Six
Our Daughter peed in the potty! We rejoiced. We praised her. We ran after her gleefully and she shrieked for joy. You cannot appreciate this fus over a pot full of urine until you have to go through this same thing yourselves. (Note to all those flirters and single dopers looking for mates – toilet trainig is the logical, if far-off, conclusion to dating.) We had the ceremonial Dumping of the Poty into the Toilet and Flushing. Our daughter got a little bowl of chocolate morsels. Not Nestle morsels. Ghirardelli morsels. My wife goes first class.

Fifteen minute later she is back on the potty. To my utter surprise she has generated moe urine. I am convinced that this is the result of nothing less than Chocolate Lust. More rejoicing. Another Ceremonial Dump, followed by the chocolate morsel orgy.

We have left her pants, underwear, and diapers off. She is now in the classic child-learning-to-go-potty garb, which is an oversized T-shirt and nothing else. Her little butt occasionally sticks out. This would be embarassing if my daughter cared, but at three years you do not. We really should have dressed her this way to start with, since there is minimal fuss when she wants to try the potty. I blame the Nanny course, myself. There’s no reason WE should have thought of this, right?
An hour later she wants to go again. This time she has to go poop. My wife compliments her on doing this. I look in and am appalled. My daughter’s earlier bowel movements are dainty things. I cannot believe that my demure little daughter could produce THIS quantity of ejecta. She must be taking lessons rom Clarence and Lotta.

This is a Big Deal, in more ways than one. We praise her to the skies. She wants to pull the Flush handle on the toilet for this one. She gets a LOT of chocolate morsels. The beauty of this scheme is that, the more rewards she gets, the moe she can produce.

Before she goes to bed she pees in the potty again. More Chocolate. Four foil stars on her chart to balance out yesterday’s blank. My wife is ecstatic.

But would it take for the next day?

(To be contnued)
Thanks to everone for their suggestions and their support. This story is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the unhousebroken. When I started posting this I had no idea how it would turn out.