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| Pooing, 15 months |
Some babies walk early, talk early, or wow their parents with other acrobatic feats. Not our kiddo, this is the only thing I will *insist* bragging about that is atypical of a Western baby: Dek started pooing on a toilet between 8 to 10 months! Its unheard of here as the diaper industry tries to keep children in diapers until age 4 and convince parents this is a "normal" phenomenon. Judgey much. Yes, but trust me by the time I'm 3 I don't want to be sitting in my own excrement. If he cans sign to nurse and eat, why not poo? Plus my mom told me I was potty trained by age 1, it didn't seem like an impossible task.
By 15 months, we could catch about 9 out of 10 poos by watchin ghim grunt and asking if he wants to potty. Not to say there aren't accidents and not to claim this is full potty training. This has helped enormously after he switched to full solid foods after his first b He sits and reads there, pees when you sit him there in the morning, and will shake his head if he's mid poo and no ready to finish.
I will credit a few people (not me)
1) Nanny - who faithfully took him to the potty 4x daily starting at 8 months (!) since he refused to lay still for diaper changes.
2) Mike - who doesn't love to copy Dad? Mike faithfully does potty time with him, so he likes to see it as dad time. By default, Mike also became the butt washer and poop handler in this process. Love that man to bits.
So here is the secret sauce/technique...Know the poo face. As soon as we saw what Mike affectionally called the "Bruce Lee grunt" - we'd run and take Dek and sit on the potty. Most of the time we'd catch him before he had pooped so we'd let him poo in the potty and praise him. This helped him understand that the toilet had a function.
- You must be consistent. I mean the nanny religiously took him to the potty 4 times a day and had him sit there for 10-15 minutes at a time. Sometimes it would work, somethings it wouldn't. On days that we'd skip, b/c we were out and about - it would impact his willingness to use
- Make a sound for voiding. I used my mom's tried and true method of Shhhhh! to encourage him to go.
- There will be accidents. That's unavoidable.
We haven't been strict enforcers always since we know he is young, so he'll revert to his diaper pooing ways. Sometimes we're in the car, sometimes we're out and about and there isn't a good potty option, so its not perfect. We're not ready to fully potty train but glad he has a head start and understands.
Ok *bragging done*. Thank you for indulging me.
