I have Found the Secret for Potty Training.....

We adults think we are so smart - we just know everything, well, no, we don't! I found or maybe should say...was TOLD the secret to potty training - both ways!

I am helping potty train my 2,1/2 yo grand daughter. Took her about 2 weeks and she was nearly potty trained except for long car rides, over night and for doing "number 2". SHe had it down pat.


So we started focusing on teaching her to (for lack of better word and to make the story move a little quicker) poop on the potty and not her panties.

She pooped her character designed panties one day and I told her she pooped on Tinkerbell's face and that wasn't nice. I thought she'd understand that, and in a way she did and was sorry she did it, but it didn't make her understand to use the potty chair like she did when she went potty.

Well, this last tuesday when I picked her up from her mom, we were talking in the car on the way home - and this kid has quite the vocabulary and talks like a 8 year old!. I was trying to impress on her to go poop in the potty and not her panties. She said, "Nanny (that is what she calls me) I am potty training. I not poop training". Well, how can I argue with that! She was potty training! That is what it is called, what we called it, what it was!!! It was hard to find a come-back for that touch of intellectual common sense!

But I did - holding back my laughter, I said "Okay, then today we start Poop Training. When you need to go poop, you tell me and we will go to the potty chair and you poop there and not in your panties"

like i know so much!!! Her response to me, not cracking a smile but those wheels of thought rolling in her head - she says to me "Nanny, I can't poop on the potty chair, it is for potty, not poop".

So, I am dumbfounded, can't find an answer for that and I now forget how I ended that conversation but boy did she get me!!! A simple thing in life, all parents go through with every kid - and the whole trauma and ordeal is simply solved by listening to the words used - potty and poop. Two different things that just need to be addressed "as is"! No need to complicate them with Baby Einstein, or Joyce Brothers or any other child rearing guru - just listen to the kids and they will tell you the plain simple truths and how to fix what is broke!

What's the secret? Get 2 chairs - one for each "situation" and the kids will do as they are told!