Today, Dylan took another step in the direction of declaring his independence from diapers. The way that we are approaching potty learning with Dylan is to let him lead the way. Yesterday I casually mentioned to him that we would be going shopping for clothes soon. He asked me if he could get real underwear. I told him that since he was doing well with learning to use the potty, we could get some underwear because we do not go shopping that often and we would want to have the underwear close by for when he was ready to use it. He got very excited and told me that he was ready “right now”. I told him that we would discuss that as we went along.
Today we went shopping. Dylan was very excited to choose his first package of real underwear. He was so excited that he asked me whether we could put some on as soon as I paid for it. I decided to let him try it, even though we were going to be out shopping all day. For some reason that just felt like the right thing to do, even though I questioned whether I was crazy to do it. After all, the cloth training pants that I had put on him this morning were dry, and he had successfully asked me to take him to the bathroom at the store and used the toilet while we were shopping.
The next stop on our agenda was lunch, and as we went into the restaurant I reminded Dylan that it was important that he let me know right away if he needed to use the potty. He was fine through lunch, and before we left I checked in with him again. We used the restroom, and he left the restaurant as dry has he had gone in. I checked in with him at the three other stores that we visited this afternoon, and he let me know every time he needed to use the bathroom. Seven hours later, we arrived at home after completing a long day of shopping and errands. I took Dylan to the bathroom to change into a cloth diaper for night time and some pajamas. The underwear were completely dry.
I am amazed. I’m not expecting that every day will be like this, but I am in awe. Dylan chose a rather demanding set of circumstances under which to experiment with big boy underwear and he succeeded. I am glad that I am following his lead with potty learning, so that he can feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with owning a success that big. He is the one achieving this major milestone and he deserves every bit of the credit. All that I do is provide support and encouragement along the way.