Today’s the day. I’m so tired of diapers on the toddler. Today is the day that we are going to actively and aggressively potty train. Jessie’s been showing signs of readiness. I am optimistic that we could be in diapers only at night after today.
I am so ready for today. I have our day planned. We’re going to be casual and hang out in our jammies watching cartoons. At 9:00 we’ll change clothes and put on big girl panties instead of diapers. The plan is to drink a lot. I was supposed to get a special drink she doesn’t have often, but I didn’t make it to the store so lemonade will have to do.
Every 15 minutes her doll will whisper to me that she needs to go potty and we’ll make a big production about taking the doll potty. Dolly will go through the motions of going potty to show how it’s done. After an hour of doing this, Dolly will whisper to me that Jessie needs to sit on the potty. The hope is that she will have consumed enough liquid that she’ll be ready to go and will have held it until then.
What a lovely fantasy all of that is. It sounds so good on paper. This method is supposed to be less stressful on everyone than just letting the child run around naked and get trained because she’s tired of the feeling of wet running down her legs. We are also to hope for less mess in this fantasy method when children drink for an hour and don’t soil themselves, the floors, or the furniture.
My moms’ group had a luncheon with the author of book that employed this method. I dismissed the method as not right for us at the time. Read on for how our day went.