I backed off a little giving him his potty training space. He continued to show no interest in the short weeks before our daughter was born. My goal of having him potty trained before his sister was born was not going to happen and to be perfectly honest I did not have the motivation either. As we approached Christmas, I bought some “big boy” underwear to go in our son’s Christmas stocking with the hope that having his own underwear would peak his interest in potty training again. Unfortunately, “big boy” underwear were entirely inconsequential to our son especially with all his exciting new toys. He could not be bothered to stop playing to use the toilet. Once again, I let the potty training take a back seat. I was not interested in pushing him too hard to the point of causing him to rebel against toilet training completely. A month or so went by with no progress. We got our hands on a potty training book about Joshua and his mother and his new potty. He really enjoyed the story and asked us to read it to him over and over again. He started to talk about going potty like Joshua. We thought this was huge progress because he was finally initiating potty talk himself. However, he still lacked the motivation to go pee or poop in the potty himself. We continued to read the potty training book to him and he continued to talk about going potty like Joshua. A few weeks later I decided to put him in a pair of underwear. He did not fight me and willing put on the underwear. We went about our day as we normally would. He was doing some art activities at his table when he started calling to me frantically, “I peed, I peed.”
(To be continued …)