Potty Training: The Second Child

This whole potty-training thing seems so much less daunting, the second time around. I mean, yeah, the frantic trips up and down the stairs to the bathroom are annoying, but it’s a phase, and it, too, passes (eventually, they can hold it longer, so the trips are less frantic, and eventually they can go up and down stairs by themselves).

So Serena’s not yet 2, but I know there’s a system out there that says you should start at 22 months, and anyway, it’s summer now, so I’m home more, and it’s less annoying for her to run around with no pants on, so let’s just do it.

So we prep the whole thing. We “talk it up,” as recommended by the pediatrician. We find the sticker-stash but at the same time don’t give her stickers for a little while, so they can become contingent on going in the potty. We appoint Ben “Vice President in Charge of Stickers,” and he determines that pee is worth 2 stickers, poop worth 2, and “both” gets you 4 stickers at once!

And she is super gung-ho. Of course there are accidents, but I happen to have timed this for right around the time we were getting a new ceiling fan installed, so the rug has been rolled up anyway, and it’s just (mostly) about cleaning it up off the floor.

She makes pretty quick progress. It is a little annoying that she isn’t big enough to pull her pants up and down by herself, but you know, we just leave her pantless a lot of the time. Her shirts, however, are plastered in stickers, due to the many successes (and low standards for success that are associated with shaping).

She loves wearing her “big girl underpants” which are, in fact too big for her, and I’m lucky enough to have had handed down to me some training pants (which I would’ve been too cheap to buy), so that gets us through, say, the long car-rides to Ben’s nature camp.

So that was August. In September we have a 3-day stretch with NO ACCIDENTS. I figure we’re golden. She *can* do it, she’s proud of herself, she seems to want to do it.

And then. Suddenly, the accidents start to increase and the successes decrease, until we have a 3-day stretch of EXCLUSIVELY accidents during which Serena persistently tells us she has to go to the bathroom after she has already gone in her pants.

“Serena,” I say, “What do you like better? Going in your diaper, or going in the potty?” “Going in the potty.” she says, very definitively, though her behavior suggests otherwise. (She is, by the way, very verbal, which my pediatrician thinks is a good predictor of early potty-training ability. Well, maybe he’s right. She does have the ability. She just suddenly lacks the motivation (and the ability/willingness to tell me that she lacks the motivation.))

We continue for a few days, because I believe her that she wants to go in the potty (for some reason), and because, well, we came so far!!!

But, you know, sunk costs. It’s not summer anymore, I’m not home as much, and the only thing being accomplished here is a more-enormous-than-usual pile of laundry. So we call it quits.

A few months later (January?), Serena again expresses interest, and we try again. She says a few times that she has to go, and she seems really to hope she does, because she seems to want stickers.

Clever behaviorist that I am, I eventually notice, “The stickers are not enough of an incentive.” I am (eventually) reminded of what Steve Hinshaw, a leading ADHD researcher says when his patients’ parents tell them that the incentives-thing “doesn’t work”. “What’re you using as your reward?” he asks. “Well, if Timmy can sit in his chair for 5 minutes during dinner, he can watch the history channel after dinner!” (pause) Dr. Hinshaw: “Does Timmy *like* the history channel?” Parent: “Well…”

OK, so stickers are done. Or at least no longer the primary incentive. And now Serena can count higher than 1 (you know, not just reciting numbers), so I tell her that if she goes twice in a day, she can get a prize. We happen to be in Pier I when I come up with this brilliant plan, so we pick up some little prizes from the rack near the cashier.

Nope. Nothing.

Ben tells her about 1,000 times that if she goes twice, she can have a prize, and his job description is broadened, such that he is now the Vice President in Charge of Prizes. Serena gets excited about the prizes and tells us repeatedly that if she goes twice she gets a prize! But she doesn’t do it. Not once.

Now, we’re not totally invested in it this time (it’s not summer), but I still think I was a little slow on the uptake. After about the 30th time she tells me what she has to do to get a prize and then proceeds not to do it, I realize, “the prizes aren’t a sufficient incentive either.” Duh.

What does Serena really love, I wonder? And before I finish wondering that whole sentence, I realize, “Sugar.”

I would *never* have given my first child candy to potty train him. For one thing, I teach health psychology, and I know there’s research that says that using food as a reward teaches kids that those foods are desirable, because after all, rewards are typically things we want. For another, we just didn’t give him candy. Ever. He did have his first M&Ms a little younger than perhaps he should have, because they were a topping at my friend’s daughter’s birthday party, but my friend’s dad is a pediatrician, so I figured what better setting to determine if your child can eat M&Ms without choking on them?

But I digress. Sugar. Specifically, lollipops. But I’ll bet M&Ms will work, too. She does also love edamame, and I guess the application of operant conditioning would suggest that I could *make* edamame into a highly desirable treat, but I am a bit skeptical.

Anyway, now it’s March, and in June we have an 8-hour drive to our beach vacation. So I’d guess I won’t be able to convince my husband to embark on this before then (the frequent and frantic trips to the bathroom are even less fun when they are precipitated by frequent and frantic pulling off the highway).

But I’m goin’ with candy. Like she doesn’t already know it’s desirable.