At eighteen months Cooper is an adorable blond-haired, blue-eyed bundle of energy. Like a typical boy he’s obsessed with choo-choos, cars and balls. And also like many boys, he’s a little behind verbally. While both of my girls were singing and using short phrases at this age, Cooper still has a vocabulary of under twenty words and he often prefers to point and grunt and seems to get frustrated that I can’t read his mind. He often wants to be picked up and then points around the room as if to steer me, shaking his head and saying “No!” until I find the the object of his desire. And then there’s potty training.
Since he’s still showing very little interest in the potty, other than sitting on it for about ten seconds and saying “Pee pee, pee pee!” before he gets distracted and hops up, I’ve put it on the back burner. I’ve been focusing my efforts on let him run around naked as much as possible so that he can see what happens when he “goes.” I won’t be able to do this much longer as the chill of fall is in the air. Needless to say, we’ve had countless pee puddles on the floor and the occasional log as well. I remember while potting training our middle child Kate, who was a climber, I found a poop log on a side table. Seriously.
Cooper surprised me the other day when he peed on the kitchen floor and then ran over to the potty saying “Pee pee, pee pee!” and pointing excitedly. I sat him down as quickly as I could but alas, not even a dribble made it into the pot…but on the other hand, I could see that he was starting to make the connection….slowly, very slowly but surely. He tends to pee on the floor and then immediately run through it, splat! Banging his head on the hardwood floor and getting covered. Luckily, baby urine is pretty mild so the damage is minimal and I always try not to laugh too hard.
Probably the biggest “incident” so far with Cooper was when I left him unattended and diaper-less for a few minutes (I was in the same room but he was around the corner and I couldn’t see him).Β I heard him calling “Mama! Mama!” with a sort of urgency– a mix of surprise and pride, if you will. I walked around the corner to find him using his toy vacuum to “vacuum up” a large poop log on the carpet. The picture I have of him, buck-naked, and proudly pushing his bright yellow vacuum back and forth over the carpet to clean up after himself still makes me laugh out loud. The poo ground into the carpet, however, quickly turned the laughter into dry heaving.
Where’s the strangest place you’ve found a puddle of pee or worse while potty training your child? Come on, it can’t be any worse than on a side table, or can it?
That last part seriously made me laugh out loud. It makes me grateful that we have started elimination communication and now at 8 months catch all our poos in the potty. Makes for much easier diaper laundry too.
You are so brave!! I don’t think I could handle the naked method for potty training. The only real puddle we have had was standing naked after a bath and peeing on the bathroom door. π Thanks for the good laugh this morning!
While potty training my first, we left her bottomless quite often too. One day I turned around to find poop on the kitchen floor. Ew. I went to grab toilet paper to pick it up and it was gone…and then I saw the dog walking away. Blech!
I have been very fortunate. My first boy was very interested in potty training very early and left bottomless and pretty much always made it to the potty, I don’t recall a single puddle or log anywhere, my second son was a little more difficult to get to go on the potty, but again only poo in his undies if he was outside playing. Third boy is still a baby, but I have left him bottomless, and alas I have had a lot a poo on a blanket or rug π
Oh this could be written about my daughter! She also is 18 months and just starting to pick up on some words, but the grunting and pointing is her method of speech a lot of times too! We also a lot of naked time and friends think I’m nuts! But I know she’s learning and there is no pressure to use the potty- its there- she knows the sign for it and at some point I just know it will click π
My son sounds a lot like Cooper. Last night after making a puddle on the carpet, my husband reminded him that pee pee goes in the potty. To which, he nodded earnestly and said, “oh yeah”. We’ll be in diapers for a while, I’m sure. The strangest place we’ve found a puddle so far is in our master closet – although it may have been the dog!
Thanks for sharing this. I laughed and laughed, all the ‘logs’ and such. I read it aloud to my older kids so they could laugh too! All our naked potty practice was done in summer out-of-doors so I don’t have such funny stories π
Poo in the carpet!!!! I think that would turn me off potty training for months! The worst we’ve had so far is pee on the couch (which isn’t that bad, I know) so we’ll see what the future brings.
Ours has pooped on the carpet, too. He is 19 months and showing interest in the potty, but I can tell he’s not ready!
Thanks for the entertaining story! I have a 14 month old and I am not really looking forward to potty training, but I AM looking forward to no more diapers π
When potty training my daughter….she loved to pee-pee in front of the tv…..ugh!!! Thank goodness it only took her 4 days to potty train!!!!
Oh my word this made me laugh til I cried. Thanks for the candid share. Now I know what we have to look forward to in a few months.
Has anyone on staff tried EC? We’ve been regularly pottying our almost-8-month-old since she was 3 months old; some days are immensely successful and others not so much, but I’m curious as to when others doing this have successfully trained. I figure she’s got a huge head-start already since she’s used to potty, and she’s starting to associate it with her functions little by little.
Wow, I’ve never been fortunate to have any of my children start to potty train at such a young age – maybe now that we are using cloth diapers, things might be different. Great story!
My Daughter was diaper-less after a bath the other day, in a split second she pooped right in the middle of the kitchen and then popped right up exclaiming, “All done!” hahaha
I think it’s a waste of time and energy to potty train a kid that young if they don’t respond to it quickly. I hate changing my 3.5 year old’s diapers, but I’d much rather do that than clean poo out of my carpet every day, which is what I did for a full month over the summer. And my son never has logs of poo, so it was everywhere. There was more than one instance where I basically shampooed his entire bedroom.
I am so happy we waited with my oldest. He litereally potty trained himself at 3. I didn’t have to remind him or anything. He just felt the urge and went himself. Since potty training over a year ago we have only had 5 accidents and he was potty trained at night within a month without any hassle or stress to him
We haven’t started potty training yet, but all these stories make me kind of anxious.
To be able to laugh all that off is great! Hard wood floors, I’d be all for it, but carpets! Oh man! My son pooped on the carpet a couple times, but never smeared it in or anything, never pooped in a weird place. I was lucky with him, he never took off diapers or played in his poop. We did however have to clean up everything ASAP because if we turned our back for 10 seconds the dog would eat it… GROSS!! So, who knows, maybe we would have found something in a strange place…
My daughter one pooped in the tub and didn’t tell me :/
Not a nice thing to find!!!
My daughter will only poo on the potty, and the other night she said he tummy hurt and came running back in my room saying she needed to ‘wipe the poo’ turns out she didn’t make it to the potty. There was an accident right be the toilet on the rug.
We had a tough time potty training our 2nd son. In the end, it was just lots of practice sitting on the toilet and constantly asking him if he had to go and then making him sit on the toilet. It was 2 weeks of hell.
I haven’t potty trained my youngest yet, but once when I was out with a friend who is potty training her son, he pee peed a big puddle in Target. My friend ended up grabbing a diaper in her bag and using that to mop up the puddle.
Getting ready to potty train my youngest……hoping that she will catch on quickly cause we have a new baby on the way!!!
This is a great story… I showed my husband who got a laugh out of it as well. Our little guy is only 8 months and while he’s interested in the toilet, it’s more as a toy than anything. We’re just finishing baby-proofing and toilet seat locks are a part of it. So we’ll be waiting a while yet for potty training, I think.
Too funny! Never had that experience, but thanks for the laugh!
my 20 month old doesn’t say any words on their own. he knows over 100 American Sign Language signs, and occasionally will accompany the sign with the first syllable of the word “Baw” (ball), “booh” (book), “buh” (Bubble), “Bah” (bath)… I’m hoping he’ll start speaking a bit more soon. We tried sitting him on the potty and he got excited because he knew what it was. He ran over to it, pointed at it and went “ooooooo!!!!” then ran back to where he was and let a log fall. :\
We’re not at the potty training phase yet, but I envy my friend’s hardwood floors for that reason. While I appreciate our carpets in wintertime, I’ve seen diaper-free time be so helpful in the process that I hope to be able to make that work.
You are brave! I don’t have the patience to start so early. My oldest was 3 before I started naked time, but then she was potty trained in a week. I just don’t think she was ready before then.
I can’t wait to have my first: a boy! They seem like so much fun! And the potty training stage should be interesting hehe. Hopefully no logs on my floor but who knows :-/
This story cracked me up!! Too funny!! Luckily, the only unpleasant place we’ve found a “log” is in the bathtub – on more than one occasion! Thank goodness for bleach!!
We never did the naked thing so I haven’t had anything worse than logs in the tub here! LOL
Aww! hopefully he gets it fully down soon!
My daughter will be 1 next week so we haven’t started potty training but I hope it goes smoothly! Thanks for the laugh!
I try everyday!!!! Alice sits on the potty just for fun and calls me when she is doing it in his diaper!
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