Potty Training — Stage one

One night, when my son was almost 22 months old, he started saying, “poo poo?”

I asked, “Do you have to go to the potty?”

He emphatically answered, “No-o-o-o-o!”

The previous week, he screamed when I tried to put him on his potty chair. I never got anywhere with the potty seat that fits into the adult toilet. I figured that he would probably refuse to get on his potty chair again this time, but carried him into the bathroom anyway. I already had his diaper off for his bedtime change of clothes, so I decided, “Go for it!”

He yelled, “No! No! No!” the whole way into the bathroom. When I tried to put him on the potty chair, he held tightly to my neck and put up a struggle at first.

To my amazement, he let go and sat down.

Even better, he stayed there!

After he was on, he didn’t want to get off. He sat there for fifteen minutes pointing to everything around him. I had to name everything in the room, give him a rundown of all his body parts, and repeat twenty-five times that the big potty was “daddy’s potty” and the little potty was “Shawn’s potty.”

He didn’t pee or poop in the potty. But, he made friends with his potty chair.