Prevention is better than Cure

Posted by on December 15, 2013

Previous Post

You would think a child would be more prone to accidents when they are out of their routine or distracted. Not our Baby Girl. Her best accident free days, have been when we are out and about either shopping, visiting or at a park.

She stayed dry for her 1st Birthday Party (you can imagine how pre occupied we all were that day?) and during a three day family mini break, including the one hour car trip to get to our destination and back. The day we arrived home from this weekend she had 3 accidents in 2 hours. Go figure…

The time frame between Baby Girl’s visits to the toilet can be anywhere up to 4-5 hours apart when we leave the house. Her control is unbelievable (when she chooses). I couldn’t believe it the first time this happened. I thought she would have such a pain in her tummy but I couldn’t get her to use a toilet or her Portable Potty. The last trick I had up my sleeve was to sit her on the potty and give her a banana to eat. Not so hygienic I know but prevention is better than cure. She did a huge wee – what a massive relief. I wonder how long she would’ve held it before we had Niagara falls…?

She set her record one weekend when we stayed at a friends place – 18 hours of refusing to use the toilet/potty and still remained dry (including waking up with a dry pull up after a good nights sleep). I was nearly beside myself thinking she will need to go to the emergency with a bladder infection!

So the question is “Am I missing the signs?” Why is it she has much better control when we are out but not at home?

Communication skills definitely aren’t the problem. Baby Girl certainly communicates clearly and somewhat loudly, for everything else in her life with pointing, using her manners with ‘ta’ and other forms of persistence till we figure out the message she is trying to get across.

I feel like we have been stuck in the ‘Mum and Dad are toilet trained’ stage for absolutely long enough. I realise Baby Girl is only young but I know, she knows, exactly what is going on. I just have to find the ‘carrot’ to lure her to use the toilet at home to the extent she does when we are away from home.

So I had a Conversation with my Sister and realised, its time to go back to basics.

Lets start with a sticker book. I had yet to try any other form of rewards outside of praise, hugs and kisses during this toilet training experience. Stickers didn’t work with our Little Man and turns out I needed my Sister to remind me each child has different motivations. Thanks to reading Personalities plus for Parents I have learnt Baby Girls number one emotional need is ‘appreciation for all achievements’.

So we start with giving her one sticker each time she uses the toilet and two for telling us she needs to go in the first place. I have also gone back to celebrating with her when she has a success on the toilet by singing our little jingle (wee-wee/poo-poo in the toi-let) and expressing how proud we are of her achievements. We have all started taking the whole process a bit for granted lately.

I also remembered another song we used to sing with Little Man which he got excited about using on the way to the toilet –

“Wee Mumma, Wee Mumma, Wee Wee Wee!”
“Poo Mumma, Poo Mumma, Poo Poo Poo!”

So we all started singing Baby Girl this song when she needed to go to the toilet and a new fresh game has been introduced.

AND ITS WORKING!!!!!!!

Almost the next day we had a full day of her telling me she needed to got to the toilet and she laughed her head off as we raced each other there with me singing our revived song. Looks like we just needed to refresh the whole process and lighten up a bit.

Sanity has been restored.

Keen to keep reading?

Undies

Big Girl Undies

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missed my first post in this category?

Previous conversations

Facebookpinterestinstagrammailby feather
Facebookredditby feather

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *