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Does a bear go potty in the woods?

At our house, apparently not.

Sadly, Pooh Bear has been the only one to use the training potty since we borrowed it from Friend and Doc a couple of months ago.

After making some real efforts to initiate Tad into the ways of the potty, including that parent meeting that I went to, we’ve hit a wall. Tad simply does not care about his bodily functions, and there is no way that we can get him to release on the toilet.

He is aware about some things – he will tell us now when he’s pooped (as if the smell wouldn’t tell us before he could), and we know that he’s pooping because he will go into his room, shut the door, and get a book. He used to take a book into the bathroom, but has abandoned that in favor of his room. I preferred the bathroom. At least it has a FAN.

I have caught him as he “begins” in his room, but if I get him on the potty, he just locks down and won’t finish until he gets down and away from me. It’s a losing battle.

If I simply put him in underwear or training pants, all I’d be doing is cleaning up messes all day – which he would be very diligent in telling me about. But as far as anticipating it or learning from it – I just don’t think we’re there yet. And even though his verbal skills are improving, with progress that we can hear all the time, and even though his behavior is a little more controlled and he learns to follow directions, potty training just isn’t going to happen. Unless I want to buy stock in Resolve, follow the boy around and do a LOT more laundry.

I talked to his teachers about this during his parent-teacher conference back in November, and when I told them that we use cloth diapers at home for him and he STILL doesn’t care if he’s wet, even they acknowledged that we were stuck.

At this point, we are just going with the flow. And providing Tad with plenty of good books to read while he goes about his, um, business. What else can we do?

One Response to “Does a bear go potty in the woods?”

  1. Friend
    January 9th, 2009 10:17
    1

    Welcome to the world of potty-training boys! 🙂 You were really spoiled with Ane.

    No worries. All you can do is wait, wait, wait. Or find the perfect bribe, maybe something like Curious George videos (like computer time was for my boys)…