Progress, finally!
We're finally making some progress with Zoë's potty training. The problem has been that she doesn't understand why she should go on the toilet instead of in her pants. The normal motivators don't work, because they rely on the child being able to actually understand what you're saying (e.g., "Only babies wear nappies" or "Big girls go on the potty, and you want to be a big girl, don't you?").
Well, we finally found a good motivator! Pull-Ups (disposable training pants) have changed their design so that instead of Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck, the girls' pants have Disney Princesses on them. Zoë was absolutely enchanted. She loves Disney, and she's a naturally "girly girl" (she loves all things girlish, including jewelry, powder, having her hair fussed over, dressing up, etc.). She really, REALLY wants to wear the "Princess Pants" (as we've come to call them).
The package has a picture of a little girl sitting on the potty and wearing the pants, so we used that picture as a reinforcement, to emphasize and communicate to Zoë. When she goes in her pants, she's not allowed to wear "Princess Pants", but has to wear a nappy. We show her the picture of the little girl and say, "Princess pants are for little girls who do a wee on the potty, not in their pants." Last night she had quite a tantrum because she had gone in her pants and wanted to wear the Pull-Ups, but wasn't allowed to do so.
Today, she's been very, very cooperative with going to the toilet. Every time I've asked, "Do you want to do a wee on the potty?", she's responded by trotting off to the bathroom and willingly gotten up on the toilet. When she goes, I make a big production of what a good girl she is and that she's wearing Princess Pants because she goes on the potty, and then I show her the picture of the little girl on the package.
This seems to be working. She's still not saying when she needs to go, but she doesn't say much ever (although most of the time she'll tell us verbally or with body language when she needs to have a bowel movement), so we'll just have to grow into that. For now, I don't mind just keeping an eye on the clock and taking her to the toilet regularly.
I'm so glad we've finally found something that makes her WANT to use the toilet. Without that spark, there's just no way to successfully train a kid.
Once I'm very comfortable with her toilet habits, we'll go back to the panties (which she also really liked, since all the panties we got for her were in bright colors or with interesting patterns) and see how we go.
Allow me to add, "Whew." Potty training someone small who just doesn't understand what you're saying is quite a task. We've been at this off and on for a little more than a year... I should have listened to the experts who recommend not even starting to toilet train a significantly Speech Delayed child until they're at least four!
Potty game
Zoë has a toy that is the empty box for a certain brand of baby wipes. The box looks like a giant Lego block, and it's got a hinged lid. However, if you turn it on its end and put in a white plastic cup, a small toy can go inside and use it for a potty!
She played the "go potty" game for some time last night. The little figure would go in and "sit" on the potty, she'd shut the door, then come back in a little while and say, "Aww done!" and take the figure out, "flush" the potty (with "whoosh" sound effects), wash its hands (with "running water" sound effects) and then pretend to put clean pants ("keen pats") on it.
She got the idea for an upright box as a potty because a few weeks ago we went for an outing in one of the city's large public parks, where they have "porta-loos" (porta-potties, in American dialect), and Zoë used one of them. Now she knows that sometimes potties come in small, upright buildings...
Anyway, it's good to see her playing on this subject. It's a good sign that she's starting to internalize the whole idea of using the toilet. Now if only she could understand about ALWAYS using the toilet instead of wetting her pants, we'd be in business.
Treat
Zoë often gets a treat when she uses the potty successfully. This evening, she pulled her father over to the cupboard where the treats are and said to him, "Poo potty. Pee pee potty."
Translation: Earlier today, I used the potty, so give me a treat now.
It's actually a pretty good leap of understanding that she can tell him about something she did much earlier in the day, and also that she'll use that to get a treat for herself. Her langauge use is improving constantly, sometimes in surprising ways.
I love you...
Today, Zoë came over to me and gave me a cuddle. I put my arm around her for a cuddle back and she said, "I love you" (not that clearly, but I knew what she was saying). I said, "Awww, that's nice. I love you, too." She then added, "I love you... DDD?"
Translation: I'm SOOO cute and I love you SOOO much, will you put on a movie (DVD) for me?
How can you resist that... (For the record, I didn't.)
General improvements
Zoë's doing remarkably well with the potty training these days. She hasn't done a poo in her panties at all, not even once, and she hasn't had a big wee accident for days. She has had a few occasions when she held it too long and started to go in her pants, but she notices and says, "Uh oh!"
She still isn't really asking to go. She'll sometimes say, "Pew! Yuck!" when she needs to do a poo (because I say that when changing a stinky nappy), and the "Uh oh," if she starts to wee in her pants, but most of the time we have to just guess when she probably needs to go and take her. Thankfully, she's not fighting about it (she used to complain if we put her on the potty when she didn't need to go). She seems to have figured out that using the toilet is just what you do when you're wearing panties, and she definitely likes wearing panties.
The other thing she's done lately is talk more and more regularly. She came up to me the other day with a ladybug hair tie and said, "Bug" (well, really, it was more like "boogh" the first time she said it). Then tonight, we were waiting at a red light as a train crossed and she piped up, "Train!" (Grandpop the railfan will be so proud).
I have high hopes that by the end of this school year, which she'll be repeating, she'll be ready to move on to the next grade. And with any luck, she'll be ready to wear panties to pre-school when it starts up in a few weeks.
Potty and panties
We're having mixed luck with having Zoë wear panties. She clearly loves wearing them, but she's had two very big accidents on the carpet (we're planning on renting a carpet cleaner and doing the floor anyway, but it's still pretty nasty when it happens).
When we're out, she seems to have no problem using the potty. In fact, she seems to like using "strange" toilets. But at home, it's very "hit or miss". We put her on the potty regularly to encourage her, but one of her big accidents happend not long after she'd been put on the toilet to do a wee. Perhaps she just needed to sit there longer? I honestly don't know.
We do seem to be making at least some progress, but it's very, very frustrating to say the least, probably for her as well as for us!
Potty
Zoë got some panties for Christmas. They had teddy bears on them, and she quite liked them. She said "teddy bear" and wanted to put them on. So we put them on her. She seemed to think it was a little weird, then she asked to have them off so she could go to bed (she wanted a nappy on, which is fair enough).
It soon became clear that she liked the panties and we thought maybe we could encourage her to use the potty if we just put her in the panties and dealt with it (since we haven't had much luck otherwise). She does seem to do well with routines and regular rules (such as "wash hands after you use the potty" or certain bath routines, etc.), so we thought that maybe "you can't wee in your panties" might work.
The first time she did wee in her pants, she made a BIG mess of it. She just let go utterly and it was pretty icky. We've been continuing to work on it, though, off and on, and today she was wearing panties and she had a little accident, but it was only a small one. It's almost as if she started to go and then realized she shouldn't, and stopped.
So, well, it looks promising. I admit I'm getting very frustrated with her. Teaching someone how to use the toilet when they don't understand language is quite difficult and I'm at a bit of a loss. I have read that it's not a good idea to try to potty train a speech-delayed or autistic child (and we still don't really know if Zoë is actually mildly autistic or if she's just developmentally delayed) until they're at least four years old. She's just turned four, and it seems she may finally be able to cooperate and comply.
She also says "potty" very well. She said it yesterday as "poT Ty", very clearly pronouncing the syllables and the sounds in the middle. Now if she'd only say that when she actually needs to use the potty, we'd be making some real progress...
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