Potty Talk
Many of you will find this post to be of absolutely no interest to you. Others, however, may think this is perfect timing for you, or at least something that you can come back to in a few months when you are ready to being some "potty talk" in your own house.
I mentioned in an earlier post that we were sorta potty training Daniel. This, of course, is a daunting journey for most parents (curses to you parents out there that had the kiddo fully trained in a weekend). He's pretty much figured out the "gotta go" feeling, and during the day or evening, while at home, he is peeing 3-5 times in the potty!! I am utterly thrilled with this fact, especially since I understand that boys are much harder to train than girls. We've got to discover, however, how to transition this success to the outside world. As of now, he only goes in his potty, but he has major interest in the big potty, but just don't try to get him to sit on it! He is also sitting to pee, so there is yet another changeover that we will have to make at some point. Being that he just turned 2 in November, I can see why those things seem a little overwhelming at this point. He's even pooped in the potty a few times, but that seems to worry him a little after it has happened. From what I hear and read, this is normal too.
To help gear the kiddo up for the process or to encourage him in his attempts, I wanted to find him some videos that show or tell him what he needs to do. First off, I requested a free DVD from the Huggies folks. It has parent tips and such, but the best part are the songs that you can play for your toddler. Through this, Daniel learned the excitement of "wooshing" your pee down the potty. We had specific dance moves that we would do during celebration clips, after he had successes. With this being free, you can't really go wrong, so if you are training or thinking abotu training, just go ahead and ask them to send you one. One downfall to this DVD is that you have to play each clip individually, so after a few seconds or a minute, you have to move on to the next one, for it will not just "play all."
Another thing that I did was to explore YouTube for some teaching vidoes or fun potty clips. The best one, according to Daniel, is the Elmo potty clip. It has a catchy song and, well, it has Elmo!
I also hunted down some other appropiate clips for him to watch, and you can see those links below (please note, none of these are of the greatest quality, but they help to get the job done):
There is a pelothra of videos that deal with toilet/potty training, but really, don't waste your time looking for many more. Trust that I have done the looking, giving you most of the decent clips. There is a whole series of videos that contain a Japanese tiger who learns to pee in the potty, but it is all in Japanese. Therefore, unless your kiddo is fluent in that language (or he can read English subtitles) they will not really work for you. And, I have a caveat to share......make sure you preview all materials first. I know this is a classic rule for folks in the world of pedagogy, but after Daniel had viewed some of the cute, decent clips I had found, he kindly asked me to see more, hence I began to click on other "suggested videos" for him to see, which I had not viewed yet. A few started off fine: a digital baby goes to a toilet and begins to pee on it, only to be completely swallowed by a toilet with a menacing laugh. Daniel did not flinch or batt and eye at that clip, but I can't imagine it was a good thing for him to see it.
Ses@meStreet.org is a great site full of neat games and videos for kids that I sometimes show Daniel. There are even "lap games" that you can play with your kid, such as a hide-and-seek game. These require no knowledge of what to click or when to click it. Instead, they allow a kid to partipicate when he or she touches any key on the keyboard. For example, Elmo hides and your child touches any key, he or she has automatically found Elmo. On that same site is a video that discusses stopping what you are doing and making sure you go to the potty. We have not watched this one too much, but I do think that it could be very helpful, especially if you are working on trying to break a toddler of accidents, rather than just beginning the potty training process.
A final helpful thing that I have come across, other than a few books (but those are pretty easily acessed), is a potty time DVD that I found at a consignment store for $3.00. Now that we have it, I would say that it would be worth buying it, even at full price.
So, there you have it: a mixture of potty training tools. If you know any other helpful materials or tips, please share them with me!
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