Day One of Three

So I feel like I went from nothing to post to lots of things to post, but this is the one I've been the most excited/frustrated/overwhelmed with so I wanted to get this one up first.

I was recently telling a friend of mine at work (with very active nearly four year old twins) about difficulty potty training Mason. So much of what I had heard was that I would have to wait until he was ready. Between having a new baby enroute and having paid a fair amount to register him at a preschool, I wanted to make more headway than that. We had tried a couple of approaches, and Mason responds well to Daddy to a point, but then nothing. As I was telling her about my frustration with it, she nodded in understanding and referred me to Lora Jensen's 3 Day Potty Training Method.

The first thing that caught me about it was her saying the first step was having your child assist you in throwing away diapers, Pull Ups, and anything resembling them. She instructs you to clean out your car, the diaper bag, that one bag you carried around six months ago that still has a diaper in the bottom. She said Pull Ups and padded underwear are a crutch. It was the exact same thing I'd been thinking as we used them, because we were getting no further than using a Pull Up instead of a diaper.

I'll spare you the gory details, except to say it's copyrighted information and you have to purchase it; it's an eBook available for immediate download. You use a very positive, reinforcing approach, and you can start as early as age 22 months.

So we started Day One yesterday. After four or five accidents, I was telling Alan that I thought we might've made a mistake and I didn't feel like this was going to work. It was the first time I had left Mason's side all day. Alan's valid point was that we had no choice but to continue through the night because dinner was cooking and we had already chucked all the diapers. I headed inside, resigned to the fact that I had a few more hours of mess to clean up, and what did I see? Mason sitting there, going potty. He had been playing, recognized on his own he needed to go, and went. All this had occurred in about three minutes. We had a couple of other bumpy experiences until bedtime, but I felt like we had at least turned a corner with it.

Today is Day Two; I'll be back tomorrow to let you know how that went. As for the moment, all I can say is check it out. I'm waiting the full 72 hours to make a full recommendation or dismissal, but so far so good.