Potty Training

I am not the most patient of mothers so when I heard that potty training little boys sometimes takes six months to a year I was a less than enthusiastic and determined to find a simple, quick training process. After some research I purchased the book, Toilet Training in Less Than a Day and read it several times. For about one month before beginning training we worked on three things: 1) Tolido learned to put on his own pants. 2) Mommy and Daddy demonstrated using the toilet. From, "Oh, Mommy has to go potty..." to using and then flushing the toilet. And always completing with "Mommy uses the potty just like a Big Boy!" All with an audience of inquisitive little eyes. :) Parenting cracks me up! 3) And lastly, we got a potty chair Tolido could easily empty himself and placed it in the bathroom. At every opportunity, we pointed out Tolido's potty seat to him and taught him to sit on it. When the day of training came, I took a day off work and we followed the directions in the book to the letter. Tolido and I spent the day in the kitchen with the potty seat and all the milk, water, OJ and junk food he wanted. The junk food made him thirsty and the drinks gave him MANY opportunities to practice using his potty seat. The goal of training is to make going to the potty an independent activity for your child. So, when Tolido used the potty chair, he was then instructed to pull up his pants and take his potty seat to the toilet, empty it, flush the toilet and return the potty seat to the potty chair. He mastered the process the first day. Over the next few days, we worked on dealing with distractions - toys, Daddy being home, Mommy working, short outings, etc. Soon we realized that lugging a potty chair around was not going to be convenient and that, though Tolido says few words, we needed him to communicate when he needed to go potty and needed assistance. This has been a slower process but we were encouraged by his ability to stay dry through three-hour naps and through the night. Yesterday - two weeks and five days into training - we were standing around talking with friends when Tolido said, "Daddy?" Daddy said, "Yes, Tolido?" Tolido said, "Poo." Daddy didn't quite hear him but Mommy thought she did and said, "What do you need, Tolido?" Toildo said, "Poo." We were down at the park and a long way from the car and the potty. It was the perfect opportunity to teach him to "pee in the woods" but I wanted to see if he would understand that I was trying my level best to get him to the potty and see if he could hold it. So I scooped him up and went dashing across a ravine and half-crawled up a hillside to the car. We got in the car and zoomed up to the house and I let him out. He went straight to him potty seat and sure enough, he had to pee! :) YAY!! GOOD BOY!! There will be more accidents and that's okay. I'm still going to declare him potty trained in just two weeks and five days. Now to teach him to use the grown up toilet and the all important lesson of peeing in the woods! :)