It only feels like yesterday when I first tried to potty train Bella and now it’s Flo’s turn. Flo has always been forward for her age and she has been doing her business on and off in the toilet since she was 18 months so I was confident that potty training would be an absolute breeze, how wrong was I?!
There’s a new phase in town and it’s called defiance. Flo has hit 2.5 years old and her strong will as well as her attitude is at its highest. It feels like her daily purpose is to do the complete opposite to what I’ve asked her to do, can anyone relate? A couple of days ago, I decided to take the plunge and ditch the nappies, we can’t exactly go anywhere so I thought it would be the perfect time.
The night before the girls decorated the potty with Princess & Pokemon stickers to help encourage Flo to get excited. In the morning I made a big fuss and gave Flo the big girl pep talk, tried to take her nappy off to put on her knickers and she lost the plot, she went from 0 to 100. She cried, got angry, lashed out and even tried to bite me (a tad extreme), so I took a deep breath and decided to resort to plan b, good old fashioned bribery.
The promise of a party ring biscuit did the trick and Flo’s potty training officially began. I set my alarm on my phone for every 30 mins throughout the whole day and whatever Flo was doing she would have to stop and sit on the potty. She didn’t do her first wee until 2pm (talk about keeping a Mama on the edge) and by the end of her first day, she had done three wees on the potty and had two accidents, including a massive poo on the floor-happy days!
I’ve been using Flo’s beautiful personalised reward chart by Dotty About Paper https://www.dottyaboutpaper.co.uk to help keep Flo motivated. Whenever she does a wee, she gets to put a star on her chart and when she gets to four, she gets a treat. We are now on day three and she is doing really well with it, I’m still having to remind her every 30 mins and she only had one accident yesterday.
Flo was a bit reluctant to put her knickers on this morning and there were a few tears, but I was kind but firm and reminded her what a good job she is doing and that we wasn’t going to throw all her hard work away. Tomorrow I’m going to reduce the amount of reminders and see how she gets on, watch this space. I may need a large glass of wine or two!