Potty-training Revisited

I had to chuckle as I read a friend's Facebook comment about potty-training her son.  I had two daughters who were potty-trained by three.  Both would have been potty-trained by two; however, each time we hit that milestone, we had a move and I wasn't ready.  I believe if you miss that narrow window of opportunity, you've got to wait six months until they are ready again. 

ANYWAY . . . parents with three-year-olds in diapers were lazy and not willing to deal with the mess of potty-training.  This is what I thought before I discovered I was just an average mom.  This is what I thought until God, with His infinite wisdom and gentle sense of humor, gave me my son. 

I AM going to put it in writing--boys are different.  He is now a healthy six year old, but he is lucky he survived the potty training YEARS.  I started when he was about 2 or so.  No luck.  Occassional coincidental pee-pee on the potty.  The summer before he turned three we did all the techniques.  The rewards.  The flooding with salty snacks and juice where you carry the pile of dry underwear outside with you and change as soon as he was wet.  At three years old, I tried the pull-up thing (do pull-ups work for anyone as a potty-training tool?).  Then we went to only underwear during the day.  He would #1 or #2 and just sit on my couch in his own . . . "stuff." 

My husband, who was no help during this process, made a mistake and looked at me one day as I'm shampooing "stuff" from the couch.  He said, "Well, everyone says boys are tougher to train."  That was one of those moments where you head spins around three times before you start speaking with foam coming out the corners of your mouth and steam coming out your ears.  "I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR TWO YEARS NOW!!!!"  He never commented on the process again.

Good luck to my friend.  I hope her techniques are more effective.  Did I mentioned that my six-year-old kindergartener got off the bus today, had a snack, and peed his pants while running to the bathroom?  Like I said--the potty-training YEARS.