We surrender!

Potty Training. We give up.

Easton has always responded well to the "cold turkey" approach. We used this successfully when giving up the bottle, giving up the sippy cup, moving to a big boy bed, etc. We played around with the pull-ups for the longest time, but he never got the hang of peeing the potty until we went cold turkey and went straight to underwear. Actually, he was happy to wet himself in the underwear until we went commando for an entire morning and he finally HAD to pee in the potty. He's been great ever since. On the pee, that is. There was one time right after he started peeing in the potty that he sat down, pooped and all was well. There have been a handful (less than 5) times that we have been able to catch the act and wisk him to the toilet and the poop has fallen in the potty purely from gravity. Other than that, the boy waits until bedtime and poops in the pull-up. This has been going on for 7 months. That's a long, long time. We have offered treats, stickers, trains, beatings (just kidding, but not really) ...everything. For all practical purposes, he IS fully potty trained. He is trained to wait until bed, poop, bring us a new pull-up and the box of wipes, and he goes to bed happy as a clam.

Last week I declared that we were going cold turkey with phase II of potty training. We were going to take away the night time pull up. He has been without a pull-up for naps for quite some time. There was a phase when he wanted to wear underwear to bed "like Daddy" about two months ago. We told him that he had to stay dry all night for 10 nights and he could wear underwear. He made it to night 6 with no problem. Night 7 he had to poop (he's not a frequent pooper, doc says this is okay) and he decided that he did NOT want to sleep in underwear anymore. He starting wetting his pull-up the next night. But that was before Thanksgiving.

So, last week we took away the pull-up and ended up changing wet sheets for 4 nights in a row. On the 5th night he had to poop. He pooped IN HIS UNDERWEAR. Deep breaths. We were not discouraged. He had been drinking "grape juice" (aka prune juice) the past few days to help things along. The very next night, he pooped again. In his underwear. And again. In his underwear. Now this is a pattern I don't like. I declared that I would now take away the underwear. He was going to have to walk around naked for a week if that's what it took.

But I started reading online. I got no support. I kept reading that we should "be patient", "It's a power struggle", "The child will do things in their own time". We're supposed to act like we don't care and when he realizes that pooping is his pull-up is not getting him any attention then he will decide to use the potty. Personally I think this is a bunch of hooey. Kind of like letting the child "express himself" by drawing on his walls.

Spencer and I discussed our findings and decided to give the "I don't care" approach a try. We walked into Easton's room. We knew he had to poop. He had been doing the poopy dance all evening. He was already in bed for the night - naked from the waist down. (Settle down - I had only delcared the naked thing an hour prior - he didn't go out in public or anything) We told him that it was his decision when and where he wanted to poop. We gave him back his pull-ups and told him that Mommy and Daddy didn't care where he pooped. We left his room.

He came out 45 seconds later with full pull-up.

Please tell me that girls are easier to potty train.