Gar’s Toilet Training

I had met up with my children’s teachers last week, and Gar’s teacher said that he should be ready to go without diapers. I was a little doubtful, because he had not told us he needed to pee all the time, but I thought we would give it a try.

We wanted to try earlier, but he complained that the underwear was making him feel itchy. We left it as that. On Saturday, I tried again, and then he said the same thing. I decided the tag was the offending item, and not the seams. I snipped it off. After a short while, he came back to me and said it was still itchy. The remnants of the tag were still there, so I had to remove the whole thing. I hope the pants will not spoil.

This was the same pair of underwear that El refused to wear because it “says ‘Wednesday’, but today is Tuesday”. In a way, I am glad Gar is not able to read yet, so he cannot pull that on me. However, he refused to wear the yellow one because he wanted the blue one instead. Hey, I thought yellow was his favourite colour?

I told him to let us know if he wanted to pee. Unfortunately, he shouted ‘wet’.

“Do you still need to pee?” I asked.

“No,” he replied.

I wanted to change him, but had to cut out the tag from the next pair.

Ten minutes later, he peed again.

The process repeated a few times. We went through lots of colours within two hours. I had to be careful not to make him feel discouraged at any stage.

It was only in the afternoon he managed to let us know. We also made him use the potty or go to the bathroom every half an hour to an hour. Sometimes he would say no, and sometimes he would say yes.

We were running out of underwear and tried to dry them in the hot sun and then in the air-con.

In the meantime, I was also cleaning my bedroom, and vacuumed lots of dust. The bed was smelly with Gar’s urine, because he somehow managed to wet the bed a few times through diaper leaks at night. I used Febreeze and also use my Raycop anti-dust mite vacuum cleaner. I had tested positive for allergy to one of the three major dust mite types, so this helps a lot in preventing rhinitis.

In the late afternoon, Gar said he was sleepy and he wanted to sleep. I was not sure whether he was tired out by the excitement. After that, we put him back on diapers.

We will try again the next day.