We are in the ‘getting to know you’ stage of toilet training right now. We have been here for quite a few months. We started early with introducing Skye to the idea of using a toilet (around 14 months) and she was regularly doing her evening poop on the toilet without issue, but things stalled after a month or two and then there was an all out refusal for such a long time I wondered if Skye would be wearing nappies to her first day of Kindergarten! I don’t want to push her and cause her stress but I also know that she is a child that sometimes needs a little extra persuasion to get on board with things.
We have tried all kinds of things to get her to stay on the seat. Reading books, throwing toys into the already run bath, telling her she has to sit there and wait while I fill the bath for her, even painting her bloody toenails! I suspect that I would have more luck if I left her alone in there but she is just as likely to throw herself off the side. Before you make the suggestion, trying to get her stay on a potty is pointless. That requires even more useless bribery and in the event of her actually doing any business on there, she panics because she thinks it is the wrong place to do it!
Now the issue is not so much getting her to sit on the toilet, but getting her to sit there when she genuinely needs to. She has become the Girl Who Cried Poo!
Every night I ask her if she needs to use the toilet before she hops in the bath to which she invariably says no. No sooner does her bum hit the water and she is leaping up shouting “Poo!, Mummy, Poo!!!” I quickly hoist her off the bath and on to the prepared toilet seat only to have her force out a fart then declare that she is ‘binished’. This process can be repeated as many as 5 times per bath. Sometimes she is nice enough to have a wee while she is on there.
I’ll take a small win when I can get it.
I know she is playing me but I have had far too many bath time accidents to ignore her cries. I am certain the time I dismiss it will be the time she follows through. So we continue to play this game every night in the hope that we will make the breakthrough we have been working on for so long.
Did you have an over zealous toilet trainee? Can you suggest a toilet training seat that is stable enough for Skye to get up and down from herself that might help her gain some independence during this stage?
