Feeling discouraged

[Diyan]

My son is one year old today. We've been ec'ing since he was a newborn. I've never been very good at recognizing his signs, but for a while we were doing well with timing, and frequently had dry nights, and occasionally dry days too. Since he started crawling two months ago and walking a few weeks ago, things have steadily gone downhill. Now we're not even catching the first waking pees very often. I keep offering, and I think this is a phase that we'll come out of (even non-ec babes are potty independent eventually), but any words of encouragement or advice would be welcome.

[hrsmom]

Hi Diyan- Happy Birthday!!!!!! It's definitely just a phase. Things were a little rough for us when she started walking and stayed that way for awhile. (The length of this is different for everyone!) I found it frustrating when we missed the catches that we'd always had before. Like she'd been peeing in the potty after her naps for over a year, and all of a sudden she didn't! Also, she went for two months with no poopy pants, and then with walking, began pooping in her pants again. Teething messed things up, too! Even while we were having tons of misses, I could see how she was learning and growing. For whatever reason, we had a ton of misses for quite a stretch, and then all of a sudden, she takes herself potty and she tells me and that stretch of misses, even though it was aggravating and frustrating at the time, seems like nothing! Does that help? I do know how frustrating it is to seem like they are backsliding! There are times when what is needed is just to back off, even when you know there is going to be a miss. (I remember a couple of mornings in a row- and we did morning potty from like day 6- she just wanted to get up and immediately go play. I knew she was peeing and maybe pooping in her pants, but I had to let her do it her way! That only lasted two or three days, actually.)

Hang in there, keep him dry and clean and keep talking to him about pottying, and he will surprise you one of these days!

[Diyan]

Thank-you, Kimberly - that is very encouraging

[hrsmom]

Hi again Diyan- I wanted to add that it seems to me that the approach to EC really changes once they start walking. To me it's been vastly different than EC'ing a premobile baby. One difference is that when they're tiny, you offer the potty often, and when they're bigger, backing off seems more important than offering! At least with my LO that was the case. When they're tiny, we offer the potty as often as possible. When they get bigger, they are learning to take charge of that themselves. Just two things that come to mind! That would be an interesting thread, actually!