toddler ec'ing: is this a pause or ?

[landgyrl]

Here is our scenario: We are new to EC. We have a DS who is 22 months old. We mainly cloth diaper, but at 12 months he started hating being changed, so I bought him a potty. My DH thought I was nuts, but no harm in having it here, though every so often I tried to sit him on it and he wouldn't have it. Then I bought him the Once Upon a Potty Book. Fastforward to almost 19 months, during his usual naked time (after bath), he wants to and succeeds in using the potty. It escalated from there. I had him potty after nap, then in the am, and soon we were catching all pees and very soon, poos. I thought it was too easy/ good to be true. He then peed in the toilet at the store all of a sudden and we were well on our way to 'oh my gosh, i need to get him underwear' stage, nevermind training pants. Dry nights (or using the potty mid-night) too. Well...

DS does not talk very much (he is being raised bilingual, so this is a given that he'll start being more verbal later), but the words he knows, he says alot. He says 'pee' all the time. And I do mean all the time, it's hard to know when he really needs to go. At first I would drop everything and go with him to his room to pee (we read on the potty), only to have him not need to go. So my haste at answering his desire to pee as slowed, I admit. However, if we were out, and he said he needed to pee, I would find a washroom to take him to.

First he started to refuse even going into a public restroom with me or says he needs to go, then won't go and in and out of the restroom we go until I get so frustrated I give up. The last week has been unpredictable. I finally bought him underwear and trainers and while he hadn't been missing if he was naked or if he had a disposable diaper on (we do disposables on the go or bumgenius flips) he has had misses in cloth diapers and in trainers (we only do cloth trainers) and underwear. Is it possible that he is used to going in cloth, that the cloth trainers and underwear give him a sense that this is where he did his business for 18 months, that's where it goes if not in the potty? He has also started to wet his diaper at night. While I am not in a rush to get to graduate (or like my MIL said 'wouldn't it be great if he was potty trained by thanksgiving!') and I know this is not a linear process, I'm wondering about what happened and what I might have missed/ done wrong. Was I too late to introduce trainers / underwear? Did the automatic flushers in the public toilets freak hiim out (he doesn't seem to be intimidated to approach them when I use them)? All suggestions/ thoughts are welcome. I don't know anybody personally who has done EC, so I'm at a bit of a loss. I'm so thrilled that we are this far along, but I am having trouble understanding what he needs/ wants right now given the constant 'pee' statements that are sounding alot like the little boy who cried wolf by the end of the day!

Thanks so much!

[emmaegbert]

Originally Posted by landgyrl

Is it possible that he is used to going in cloth, that the cloth trainers and underwear give him a sense that this is where he did his business for 18 months, that's where it goes if not in the potty?

Totally possible. My DS had this-- with him we did something very similar to what you did (not knowing about EC but responding to his protests and complaints about dirty or wet dipes by offering a potty). You can try more nakey time, "commando" (no undies under pants), very loose pants or undies... I don't know. They do figure it out. But for several months DS would just pee if he felt anything there. It was relaxing to him I guess??

Originally Posted by landgyrl

He has also started to wet his diaper at night.

That happened with my DS as well. He started to sleep more heavily and not wake to pee. I think that nighttime and daytime are very different and for us, I just put him back in a nighttime diaper and didn't worry about it.

Originally Posted by landgyrl

Did the automatic flushers in the public toilets freak hiim out (he doesn't seem to be intimidated to approach them when I use them)?

Yes very possible! My DS was very afraid of those.

I am now toileting my second toddler (18m DD, who was part-time ECed from 2 1/2mo) and I have to say, toddlers are just weird and unpredictable. Do your best to communicate with him, offer potty at regular intervals, and if you are having lots of misses... or misses at particular times, try to just roll with it. You can certainly say "pee goes in the potty" or, "now your nice pants are all wet and we have to change" or something, but I wouldn't take it personally and try to not let it get you flustered or anything, b/c unfortunately that is a special kind of power that toddlers sometimes like to experiment with too! Also, you can say to him, "we are in the bathroom now and its okay if you don't go, but I am not going to come back to the bathroom until..." [and say something like, half an hour, before we get in the car... whatever... none of these are going to be super meaningful for a toddler but you can try to communicate that while we go to the bathroom often, we don't go CONSTANTLY]. Oh... my DS did get into a thing where he had to visit every.single.bathroom at least 2-3 times. At every store, every establishment (banks, restaurants, campus, doctors office, parks, people's houses... WHEREVER).

I think my DD is currently experimenting with how long she can hold her pee... very annoying b/c suddenly many more misses than we are used to.

[landgyrl]

Thanks for the reassurance! My mother said my brother went through a 'vist all the bathrooms' stage...but I wasn't sure about this visit the bathroom six million times until I am flustered stage!
I talked with him last night about letting me know at night when he wants to potty, and well, it seemed to have worked last night! One day at a time I guess...
So this is all about having a todller...hmmm!