Potty training

Or, excuse me, toilet learning, as the books insist on calling it now. "It's a child, nto a dog," the books all say. WhatEVER.

My son just turned three in September. He's in a class with 22 other kids at daycare, and he is only one of four who are still in diapers. It's been a problem for a few reasons, msotly because I'm not entirely certain they remember to change him in a timely manner. Frank tends towards diaper rashes. He always has a low-grade kind of rash, but it's been really bad off and on since the school year began, and he tranferred into the next older class. I find it telling that the rash gets worse as the week goes on, and gets better over the weekend.

He balks at using the potty, and has never shown any interest in it, so we decided, after realizing that peer pressure was not going to get him interested in it, that we were simply going to make him sit on the potty at various intervals throughout the day. They do it for us at school, too. He sits, and cries each time we make him sit, and so far, he has done nothing in the toilet.

Now, this week...Tuesday when he and I got home from school, and I changed his diaper, he randomly asked if he could wear his big-boy underwear. (I had bought about eighteen pairs at various times recently, of different characters, to try and get him interested in them.) I agreed- He put the underwear on (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse), and a pair of sweatpants, and we went downstairs, along with a towel to spread on the couch where he likes to sit.

Twenty minutes later, he stood up. "Mommy, I'm wet." Okay, upstairs we went, with me praising him for telling me right away. (He'll let a load of pee or poop sit in there for hours if we let him. He never tells us. I gave him a sticker for telling me right away.) We changed his underwear (Cars this time) and his sweatpants and went back downstairs. Twenty minutes later, lather, rinse, repeat.

Yesterday, same deal, except with the second pair of underwear, he pooped instead of peed. I will only say that cleaning that pair of underwear was not the most fun I have ever had.

Today, again. The second pair he again soiled, but this poop was...less solid than yesterday.

I threw the pair of underwear out. Yes, I do realize underwear cost more than diapers, but I simply could not bring myself to try and clean this pair. It wa shard enough to get them off him without retching.

I'm not sure if letting him wear big boy underwear with him not really doing anything in the potty is accomplishing anything, but he does get a thrill when I tell my husband each evening about it anhd his teachers in the morning about it, so I guess I'll let him wear them as often as he asks for them.