I may have mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating … Chanler dislikes change of any kind immensely!!!

And now on to the actual reason for the post…

A little over a month ago Chanler started wearing underwear. We have always said that we would be the kind of parents that let our kids drive the potty training process – no cajoling, no bribing, no reminding, no pushing them before they were ready, etc. Well, transitioning Chanler to underwear challenged every one of those tenants.

Long ago when Chanler was under 2 we though he was interested in using the toilet and bought him potty stuff (seat reducer, underpants, etc.) but his interest was short lived and life continued on. Within the last year I had tried again to induce interest in the potty (tie-dyed underpants, privileges for boys in underpants, etc) to no avail. In fact it seems that while Chanler could indeed use the potty and recognize when he needed to go, he didn’t care to be bothered with it. This was intensely frustrating for me – I believed that children are at some point supposed to want to no longer be in diapers, but my reality was the opposite.

Finally I had had enough and we broke down and tried what had worked for so many of my friends (and which I had mocked and sworn never to do!!!) We bribed. Jelly beans for using the toilet. Guess what – it didn’t work! All that jelly beans taught Chanler was how to produce pee when ever he wanted a jelly bean… (the kid is too smart). I was devastated! I had caved and it hadn’t even worked! After a few weeks of jelly beans on demand I lost it again and just put Chanler into underwear at home all the time. He did fine with pee, but managed (of course) to only poop when we were out of the house (so annoyed at this point). Finally 8 days after the diaper came off at home (and 4 days since he had pooped last) Chanler finally went poop on the potty! And without prompting!

After that he never looked back! That night when we went out to get some dinner he decided he wanted to wear underwear out of the house. I was amazed at how fast he switched!

What I have come to realize it that there were two problems holding Chanler back. 1) Chanler doesn’t like new things or change of any kind. He typifies “Why change if it isn’t broken,” and it wasn’t broken for him. 2) Chanler lacked confidence that he could poop on the potty and didn’t want to fail in his attempt.

So now for the last month Chanler has been wearing underwear. He has had a total of 2 accidents (both of which involved jeans that were too hard to get off by himself fast enough) and doesn’t need reminded or really helped much at all. It isn’t how I pictured it, but it has worked for Chanler.