Patience

Potty time has come to our house... yes, you heard me correctly. I am trying (so far in vain) to get Josh out of diapers and onto the potty. So far I have had no success, one pee in the potty but now that 24 hours have passed since that momentous event I fear that it was more coincidence than anything else. I had promised myself I would try this for one week... he turns 3 on Monday and I thought it would be fun thing to do to mark his birthday... now I wonder what crazy person tries to potty train and plan a three year olds birthday party in the same week? This is one of those times when I wish I had asked another Moms advice before hand.

The biggest problem of course, is training myself... every 30 - 40 minutes, take Josh for potty time. This is not easy, I get caught up in stuff. So, I have been setting the oven timer. Now though, the bell goes off and Josh runs... grinning... but running to the other side of the room. I am left wondering if this is quickly becoming more game than actual 'big boy achievement'? His Dad took a long time to train apparently, so is Josh following in Daddy's steps? IF this is true, then shouldn't Daddy be the one who needs to train him, suffer the pains of repeating the words 'pee, poop and potty' twenty thousand times in a day? It is his fault after all right?

I was telling a friend today that when I imagined up the idea to train him I had a certain image in mind... some call it a dream, I prefer to call it optimism... This is how that was to go...

"Josh, today you are going to learn to pee and poo in the potty, and you are going to be a big boy:"

"Okay"

- I pull out the potty, Josh pulls down his pants and sits on the potty, goes pee and poo and then flushes the toilet. He gets a sticker, realizes that all he needs to do is pee in the potty to get rewards and he just does it.. no more diapers...
- Josh goes to the change table, gets the diapers and throws them out singing 'Im a big kid now' and doing the potty dance around the house.

Oh how wrong I was... This is harder than I thought!! Rarely if ever do I admit to being wrong, it is of course something that rarely happens though ,so admitting it, by natural default would be rare, but still this one has me stymied. How to train a stubborn child?

The advice so far has been vast, albeit consistent... patience, (for who I want to know?) and rewards or shall we call a spade a spade and say 'bribes'. Other advice is from one end of the scale to the other...Read a book, don't read a book, watch TV, Don't watch TV, give him a toy,don't give him a toy, start on the big potty, start on a little potty, give him a treat, don't give him a treat, ... AHHHH! Won't someone just do this for me? One lady on YouTube even told me that most parents wait too long and that they should be trained by age 2 or risk serious training difficulties?! Everyone else says of course that I should wait till he's ready... but what's ready? I look at the charts and he's 'ready' but guess what... he's still NOT peeing in a potty?!

This ultimately leads me back to the dreaded word... a word I hate with real passion... PATIENCE... oh how I dread it when people tell me to be patient... I want it and I want it now has always been my philosophy and I have tried to live my life by it... (not that I have EVER been successful at that... ). It seems that I am constantly needing a lesson in the art of patience, no matter how small or how big the lesson... no matter how often I try to pretend I have learned it.. nothing works and here we are again. Yet one more lesson in patience!