Potty training; Update

Just popping in to give you guys a little update. The last time we spoke I was telling you all about how we have started to potty train Kory and how we’re all finding that.

Well since then not much has changed, I’m still leaving Kory bottomless whilst we’re at home and only putting him in a nappy to bed or if we’re going out, he’s still using the potty and he’s still doing really well. Each day he seems to be having less accidents, yesterday and the day before he didn’t have any and he’s even been telling me when he wants to use the potty or just going straight to it by himself!

Yesterday morning I needed to nip out to do the food shopping, I don’t usually take Kory food shopping with me if I can help it because he gets bored rather quickly but I figured this would be the perfect excuse to take Kory out of the house wearing a pair of his undies instead of a nappy for the first time to see how he goes on. Before we left the house I made Kory sit on the potty and he did a wee, I also made sure I’d packed a spare pair of underpants and bottoms for him just incase! Then I braved the supermarket with him and guess what…

Not only was he a delight whilst I was shopping but when we finally got back home, he’d stayed dry! No accidents! I’m so unbelievably proud of him. After that I let him go back to being bottomless again, after all we were staying at home for the rest of the day and it’s so much easier for Kory to use the potty when he doesn’t have to pull his bottoms down.

I hope this continues!

Since we last spoke, I’ve also introduced a reward chart for Kory to encourage him to carry on using the potty.

I bought this reward chart from Home & Bargains for just £1.99! It’s just what I was looking for and it’s great because not only was it cheap but it’s got lots of stickers inside and it comes with a lot of reward chart sheets that you can tear out and fill in yourself which means you can set your own personal goals for your child and have different reward charts for different things.

I wrote one out for Kory solely to help him with his potty training. It’s now up on our fridge!

I wrote the following goals because:

• Use my potty: I included this because sometimes Kory will sit on the potty but not actually do anything but I still want to praise him for this because I want him to know that sitting on the potty is a good thing. Whether he does anything or not, at least he’s still using it.

• Wee/poo on the potty: Pretty obvious why I wrote these two goals, because I want to praise Kory every time he wees/poos on the potty to encourage him to keep doing so.

• Tell mummy/daddy when I want to use the potty: I included this goal on Kory’s reward chart because sometimes he uses the potty by himself without any prompting from us or any mention from himself which is brilliant and then other times he tells us first which is also great because there may be times when Kory won’t always have instant access to a potty and he’s going to have to let either one of us know he needs to use the potty first to avoid having an accident so I praise him for doing both of these things. Hopefully getting him used to doing this at home sometimes will help should he ever need to let us know, for example, when we might be out of the house.

• Clean my potty: After every use I clean Kory’s potty and he knows this, when he’s finished on the potty I clap for him and after that he points upstairs to the bathroom because he knows that’s where I take his potty next to clean it. Kory likes to watch me do this so I included it on there. I think he thinks he’s helping me.

• Try to have no accidents: I made this a goal for Kory, in my head it includes letting us know he needs to use the potty beforehand, going to the potty on his own, using it without being prompted and staying dry when he wears underpants.

And I have to say, having a reward chart has helped with Kory’s potty training. Whenever Kory has used the potty he is so eager to show me because he knows he gets to put a sticker on his star chart, therefore making him want to use it all the time and resulting in less accidents! The little goals I have written on his reward chart are just a guideline to help with Kory’s potty training, they are in no way rules. As a first time mum I have never potty trained anyone before so I’m sort of letting Kory take the lead when it comes to his potty training and I am just trying to help him in any way I feel I can.

Well that’s all from me for now. I just wanted to give you guys an update on the potty training situation and let you all know how we’re getting on with things.