Sunday, October 5, 2008

Potty Training

So, our daughter, Sydney is 14 months old, and we bought her a potty chair yesterday to have in the house. Out of curiosity, we sat her on it with her pants and diaper on last night, then took off her diaper and pants and set her on it. Immediately, she smiled really big at us, and then she peed in it, with a poop immediately following. I'm amazed at how young she seems to be, and we are so proud of her, not to mention that she is more proud of herself than we've seen her. It's not a fluke, she signals us with "go go go", and we ask her if she has to go, and she runs (and I mean RUNS) to her potty chair. We have to hurry to get her on the potty, because she is in diapers, and she doesn't have much control yet. Out of the 9 times that we've been to the potty today, she's gone to the bathroom 7 times!
We are using a no pressure approach, just letting her govern when she goes, and giving her simple and enthusiastic praise. We will not be using the word "accident", because we never even expected that she would use the potty this quickly. She loves it, it makes her feel good, and it lessens our diaper changes. We've changed 2 diapers today, and it's 4:30 in the afternoon right now. I'm feeling so good, just bubbling over with excitement, and 15 months ago when I was pregnant with her, if you had asked me if I would be excited about this, I probably would have said no, and cried. I think that when I was pregnant with her, that I had a fear of her growing up so fast, and she has been growing so fast, but it's so rewarding, because as she grows, she keeps showing us that we are doing an incredible job as parents, because she does everything we have taught her. We have approached parenting from a slightly different perspective: we have made it a point not to fuss over her too much, we have taught her to do things for herself; thus creating a very self-sufficient person, we have shown her love everyday, we have made it a point to love each other as her parents, we have not done TV for her; thus enabling her to learn everything from us, and so many other things that I can never regret because she is turning out to be such a fantastic little person. I'm amazed everyday at her growth, and ours as well. I cannot be sad about her growing up, because I've witnessed everything first hand, and I know it is a product of our teaching.
I have faith that the potty training will fall into place just as everything else. She's learned so fast and so well, and we are so proud of her.