Check-Up
Today at the doctor’s office Davy was pronounced infection-free: you’d never know, the doctor said, that his ear had ever been infected at all. Davy also got weighed and measured: he’s seventeen and a half pounds now, but his once-astounding growth has tapered off. He’s now midrange for weight and height, and following a more normal growth curve.
Robin didn’t have an appointment today, but I did take the opportunity to ask the doc if I should be worried about Robin’s continuing resistance to potty-training. “The current advice is just to give them their space,” he said. “We used to push early potty-training and caused a lot of problems and bred oppositional behavior. There’s a wide age range in toilet readiness. The day will come when he wants to do it.” Then he gave me a little handout that says “Toilet training is not a contest. Success with toilet training does not mean that your child is more intelligent or advanced than other children. Additionally, having trouble with toilet training or starting at a later age does not mean that your child is lazy, stubborn, defiant, or a slow learner. And remember — accidents are going to happen. Girls usually complete toilet training earlier than boys. First children usually take longer than subsequent children to complete toilet training. If your child is not making progress with toilet training and is between two and four years old, it is reasonable to take a break for two to three months.” One thing the handout does suggest is encouraging Robin to change his own diapers, so I’ll probably try that before giving the whole subject a rest for a bit.
January 21st, 2011 at 6:13 am
That’s so great about Davy’s ear infection. Your doctor sounds awesome. In our case, one kid toilet-trained with almost no effort on our part before age two, staying dry at night by two-and-a-half; the other is not yet toilet trained at over three. When out of diapers, they both resist using the potty for as long as possible, but one has basically never had an accident, while the other has accidents almost daily. Same parents, kids the same gender, same potty-training techniques. Some of the difference is clearly physiological.
When they’re 18, we’ll be struggling to remember which one toilet-trained early and which one was late, and the whole diaper era will seem achingly brief (not the diapers themselves, so much, but the cute little kids…). Hooray for your doctor and for you for taking a laid-back approach!
January 21st, 2011 at 8:54 am
Thanks, Madeline — I do have a tendency to worry because Robin’s my first kid that it’s my fault, that I’m doing something wrong, and so it’s very good to hear about the variance in your experience.
January 21st, 2011 at 1:13 pm
I was lucky. My Robin was potty trained day and night at 2.5 years and had probably 5 in total accidents since then (he’s now nearly 5).
This basically means I feel no responsibility what so ever for Daniel’s current situation 🙂
Daniel’s nearly 3 and I’m aiming to have him potty trained by kindergarden.
We’ve been at it actively since September. During the week Daniel probably has an average of 1.5 accident per day at home (and he’s at preschool ALL day). On the weekends, I would say about two or three a day.
We pretty much ignore the accidents and tell him to go take off his clothes and then we’ll come clean him up. Still, accidents are super inconvenient (as in this morning when I was trying to get to work in time for a 8:40 am meeting).
Oh, at preschool, Daniel’s relatively accident free (I think one last week and none this week so far). I assume because they are more scheduled and have more kids modeling the desired behavior.
When Robin was Daniel’s age, I felt all responsible for Robin’s crappy sleeping habits (ah hum, he would only fall asleep in my bed, spent 80% of the night in our bed, took 30 minutes to fall asleep etc etc).
These days I’m mostly worried about screwing up their future education 🙂
January 21st, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Hah — always something to worry about, isn’t there?