Nicole and I decided it was time to go full bore with the whole potty training adventure with Tony yesterday. We had been telling him for a couple of weeks that once his diapers were gone he had to start wearing underwear and using the potty.
For the last couple of weeks, each time we spoke about it, he would agree and sometimes get excited at the thought of wearing big boy underwear.
Yesterday, Tony had just three diapers left and he went through them pretty quickly. By the time mommy got home from school it was time to don the big boy underwear.
He willingly put on a pair, but refused to use the potty at first. He went into the bathroom a couple of times, but once he got in there he would scream and holler that he couldn’t do it.
Tony had a couple of accidents right off the bat, but after one of them he ran into the bathroom and sat on his Elmo training potty. He almost filled the bowl! He was so excited and happy with what he had done that we thought we were making progress.
Well, that was completely and utterly wrong!
Upon arriving at Nonna’s house for dinner Tony was told he needed to use the potty since he hadn’t in at least a half hour. This is when all hell broke loose.
Tony went into full tantrum mode, screaming that he does not want to use the potty, does not want to grow up and only wants to wear baby diapers. This tantrum went on for close to one hour as none of us could calm him down or explain to him how everyone grows up in life.
Since we ran out of diapers, we bought some pull-ups for Tony to use at nighttime during the whole potty training experience. We put one of those on him, but it didn’t come without a fight from Tony. We had to tell him that the pull-ups were regular baby diapers so that he would wear them. At first, we told him they were a combination of diaper and underwear. That did not go over too well.
So, at the end of round one of this epic battle, it is Tony 1 and Mommy/Daddy 0. And that is a big ZERO. We thought we were going to make progress when he became so excited after using his Elmo potty prior to Nonna’s. But, that excitement quickly turned into sheer fear and anger at the whole idea of using the potty.
Where do we go from here? We are going to have Tony use the potty at least two times per day, but not too close to each other so he does not feel overwhelmed. We are hoping that using the potty every so often each day will help him move closer to embracing this change in his life and end his issue with using the potty.
No one ever said potty training was easy, but Tony has definitely made it interesting to say the least.
