Potty training a boy

Before the official day of potty training began, we had read lots of books about it, bought big boy briefs, watched Elmo's Potty Time and observed as our friends used the potty. I also made sure we started at a time we could easily stay home for 3 days so potty training could be the focus. The day before, I took a shower (this is important), and got the reinforces (M&M's, Skittles and Fruit Snacks) ready in Ziploc bags.

 We ate a good breakfast, I had arranged for Lucy to go play at a friend's house (I should have had someone take the baby) and then I showed David his big boy underwear. We put them on and went and sat on the toilet. Nothing happened and then he came out and peed on the rug-we persevered. I also didn't put any more underwear on him, we'll try wearing those tomorrow.

I gave him LOTS to drink. I literally had the sippy cups lined-up on the counter; as soon as he finished one, I gave him another. The theory behind this is to help him have LOTS of opportunities to see how the whole going potty on the toilet works.  

I wore a timer that went off every 12 minutes (I tried 15 minutes, but quickly learned it needed to be a bit closer than that). When the timer went off, I would say, "Let's go sit on the potty and you can pick your treat". Then he would sit on the potty, select his treat and I would immediately begin to read a book to him to keep him sitting there. Because he was drinking so many liquids, he nearly always went to the bathroom before I got done reading the book to him.I gave him an additional treat if he actually "went".

If he didn't go, I tried to keep him on the potty for at least 5 minutes. I would read books, sing songs to him, do magic tricks and let him play with the iphone. Once he was really begging to get off, I would let him get off, but I would have him try again in 5 minutes.

This seat is CRITICAL for little boys. I had a seat I used with Lucy that was padded all around and it really got in the way of his "anatomy". Do you see how this seat pokes up a bit at the front? It is a MUST for little boys. It catches the urine and keeps it going down. Yep, that was something I had not thought of until we were in the midst of everything. Thankfully a neighbor let me borrow her's.

I wore this apron ("The Apron of Reinforcement") that held my reinforces in it. I would highly recommend it! 

My sweet husband took over when he got home from work. Isn't he darling!

By the end of the day we were 2 to 1 of times going in the potty to accidents. I'll take it! Tomorrow, Marc is taking over the reigns and I will take the girls to my parents so he can devote all of his attention to David. We will pull way back on the liquids and have him try to go every 20 minutes.

A few important notes:
- I put him straight into underwear. We only use pull-ups for nap time and bed time. I think it would be too easy to not try as a hard if I had a "back-up".
-In order to keep on top of what was going on, I spent the day playing with him. We tried going outside to play, but it was too hard to convince him to come back in to try to go potty. I found it was best, to just play with him. Watching TV was tricky. Just traditional playing worked best.
-I should not have talked on the phone with anyone. This seemed to be the times accidents were a given.
-I should have stocked up on treats for ME. I think I could have used a good Sweet Tooth Fairy cakebite at lunch time. I also wished I would have bought a Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner the day before so I would not have had to worry about dinner that day.
-If he had an accident, we used over correction: I would say, "We don't put our pee-pee on the floor," while I pointed to his accident and then I would walk him to the toilet and say, "We put our pee-pee in the toilet". I would do this about 5 times in a row.
-We are currently on day 4 and we are having more successes than failures (about 2 accidents a day). I plan to stay close to home for the rest of the week and keep the focus on potty training. I take him to go potty about every 30 minutes.
-Be patient. I did not want the idea of going to the potty be a traumatic thing for him. I had to takes lots of deep breaths and I prayed a lot for the strength to do this well for my little boy.