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Boy sitting on a white pottyIf I learned something yesterday, it was that Eric needs to use the potty every 30 – 35 minutes. That knowledge gave me a good reason to keep track of time and sit him on a potty every half an hour.

No miracles happened.

Since the first day I kept a log of all the accidents, to track signs of progress – I was writing down the times of accidents (well, I was hoping to log in some wins as well). I will still keep on logging things, because otherwise it’s really hard to judge the situation objectively .

In the morning, I took his diaper off, sit him on the potty, he didn’t do anything. 15 minutes later he had an accident and I had another pair of pants to wash. The same scenario happened for a couple of times, raising the levels of frustration for me.

To break away and get a distraction from our “obsession” with the potty (I was afraid that Eric will get sick of it) we went for a walk. We only went across the road to a park, but I packed 2 pairs of trousers and training pants, just in case.

I didn’t have any plan for toileting outside. What do I do, bring the potty in a stroller? That sounded ridiculous to me and I just left it to chance :) As soon as we used all the dry clothes we had, I knew we had about 20 minutes to get home.

And then it happened. I don’t know what helped, but as soon as we came back home Eric agreed to sit on the potty, and – yippee, he did a wee. We celebrated this historical event by emptying the potty into the toilet bowl, flushing (Eric), jumping up and down and expressing our joy (his proud mom) and sticking a star on the chart.

Turns out that was the highest point of the day, because the rest were all accidents. I was beginning to think that wetting his pants was normal and that wee he did on the potty was the accident. Just kidding, this is frustration talking, not me.

Speaking of frustration, this is something for all the new moms to be aware of. I caught myself several times wanting to yell at Eric for not telling me he needs to go to the toilet. I was getting anxious and losing my patience, and that’s NOT the way to go. There were a couple of times I had to give MYSELF a “time-out” to get my emotions under control.

To stop this negativity I had to remind myself that Eric is mastering a new skill and that he is a smart kid, he will get it eventually. He is like me – it takes him time to get used to new things. And we did have a progress since yesterday – one wee on a potty is better than none!

Let’s hope for a better tomorrow.

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