goodbye pull ups

When we started our most recent potty training attempt with Maddie this past September, I was very excited about pull ups. They seemed to be a good solution to the frustration I was feeling about cleaning up accidents and at first Maddie seemed to be doing well with them. Not so much anymore. For the first half of December Maddie just wasn't doing well with potty training. She was peeing in her pull up more often than the potty and she just didn't seem to care.....not even chocolaty treats were working!

The day after we got home from Dan's parents house we made the decision that pull ups just weren't cutting it.....they are too much like diapers and we made the full time switch to underwear! In addition to the change of undergarments we also changed the way we handled accidents.....we started making Maddie fully responsible for dealing with her own accidents. When she peed in her pants, SHE had to strip her wet clothes off, SHE had to get a clean pair of underwear from her drawer and put them on herself (we did give guidance.....the tag goes in the back etc), SHE had to put her wet clothes in the laundry room, SHE had to clean up the pee on the floor (I actually cleaned it up and sanitized it, but made her wipe up with a wet rag after the fact) and SHE had to get new pants and finish dressing. After just a couple cycles of cleaning up her own accidents, Maddie has been amazing at pottying independently! We never made it a punishment or got mad at her for having accidents, we just let her deal with the natural consequences herself and she learned quickly that it was a lot easier to just use the toilet!

She wears underwear all day long now, even during nap time. She does wear a pull up at night, but I'm looking into some cloth diaper pull up trainers to use instead which will be absorbent but feel less like a diaper and will eliminate our need to pay for pull ups! Cost savings....cha-ching! Maddie has done exceptionally well during outings to the store....telling me she needs to use the potty, she independently uses the potty at home without even letting us know she's doing it.....I haven't had to repeatedly remind her to use the potty for days! Today was her first day back at preschool and we were a little nervous about how well her potty success would transfer to her busy classroom but we sent her in underwear anyway! She didn't have one single accident while at school!!!!

And if that news wasn't fantastic enough.....we haven't given her a single treat for pottying in 7 days! We haven't offered, and she hasn't asked! All this success and no tangible rewards other than high fives, enthusiasm and parental pride! Man oh man do I hope this sticks! I can't say that this is it, that she's 100% trained but this is by far the furthest we've gotten with any of our attempts and it seems like it just might stick!

She was eating lunch and needed to use the potty.....
She took care of business, washed her hands
and then came back to eat.....
Missing something?!?