Potty Training Milestone

I'm going to go out on a limb and officially declare Oliver potty trained.  He can tell us when he needs to go and he wears underwear all day, even for nap time.  However, his potty training status still comes with a couple of caveats.  He still wears a diaper or pull-up at night, and he often holds his bowel movements until then, and until this weekend, had never used a toilet away from home. 

What I've learned in this process is that potty training isn't a line drawn in the sand with not being potty trained clearly on one side of the line and being potty trained on the other side.  So that means potty trained kids may still need to wear a diaper or pull-up during naps or nighttime for a long time after they have mastered using the toilet during waking hours.  It means that even if your kid can tell you he needs to go, his head's up may be that he has to go NOW.  And of course that means there will be plenty of accidents and inconveniences, like your child announcing he needs to go as soon as you get to the park, which has no bathroom.  And your child may still need help dressing, undressing and wiping. 

Our nanny can take the credit for potty training Oliver.  Since I was dreading the process, I didn't know where to start.  Once she thought he was ready, she set up a sticker chart, promised him a new truck when he had accumulated a certain number of stickers and put him in underwear.  Her initiative was the jump start to our half-hearted attempt to potty train.  Oliver had proved to us back in April that he could use the potty and then we let the process drag on too long.  I read recently that not only do the kids have to be ready for potty training, but the parents do too.  So I shouldn't be too hard on us.  Clearly, Chris and I were not ready. 

Our nanny led potty training has had its ups and downs, but overall, once we committed ourselves to potty training, it at least was a one-step-back, but two-steps-forward kind of process.  In hindsight, I would have kept Oliver in diapers until we got back from our trip to New York City, during which he stayed with his grandparents, and from the beginning, I would have stopped using diapers all together during the daytime since I was using every opportunity - basically any time we stepped away from home - to let him wear a pull-up.  In the end, it was Oliver's stubbornness that forced me to ditch diapers completely because I grew so frustrated with him resisting wearing underwear and using the potty after each use of a diaper or pull-up.  Once we overcame that power struggle, he got the hang of using the potty after just a couple of days and we haven't looked back. 

I don't know why I was so fixated on potty training.  Every parent of older children had promised me that my child wouldn't be heading off to kindergarten in diapers.  He'd eventually just do it.  And the usual pressure parents feel - preschool - ended up being just hype when Oliver's preschool teacher assured us that it was okay to send him to school in pull-ups and potty training should be the last thing on our minds.  And now I think it's silly that I had thought I needed to have Oliver potty trained before Soren arrived in order to make my life easier just because I'd hear other parents bemoan the idea of two in diapers.  I ended up having the opposite opinion, because I can't imagine how I would have handled potty training a toddler on that little sleep.