Toilet Training: Going Cold Turkey Day One

Blake’s Toilet Training Journey

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I say desperate because I’ve been trying to potty train Blake since January 2012 but have never been successful.

But now, it’s a ‘do or die’ situation, seeing how Blake will be turning four in September. His teachers have been telling my parents (who send him and pick him up from school) to start toilet training at home, and my parents relayed their messages to me.

I lamented that I have no idea how, and Blake just refuse to do the hourly toilet visits. To which my dad replied, “Just remove the diaper and he will learn.” The first thought that came to my mind was, “Who’s going to clean up all the mess?!”

Then, advertisements begin popping up whenever I’m online, all regarding potty training. Before you think I’ve been googling about it, I haven’t. So I guess, it’s the universe telling me to suck it up and get it over with… Using my dad’s method.

So I bought some of these:

Enlisting the help of Transformers to toilet train Blake!

The boy’s pretty into Transformer Prime the animation now, and he was so sad when Bumblebee died in this scene:

I thought maybe I could sort of scare him into becoming fully toilet trained with it. You know, tell him things like, “If you pee on Bumblebee, Bumblebee will die!” Haha. I’m so mean, but I didn’t tell him that. I just said, “Remember Bumblebee fell into the pool and got wet? Do you want Bumblebee to become wet?”

The moment he came home from school, I got him to remove his diapers and wear the Transformers briefs willingly, which made him check himself out in the mirror after. It’s a hilarious sight! Haha!

Within five minutes of the change, he took a piece of diaper and asked me to change it back for him. As he wasn’t wearing any bottom, I counter his offer with a pair of shorts. It worked!

I checked on him almost every 30 minutes, asking if he needed to go to the toilet, and reminding him to tell me if he needs to go.

Barely crossing the one and a half hour mark, I heard Blake go, “Oh no! Optimus Prime is wet! So wet!” while sitting in Nakayla’s cot. He peed on Optimus Prime, the first Transformer Sean got him less than a week ago.

Instead of feeling frustrated as I thought I would be, I just looked at him and said calmly, “Look, Blake, you peed. That’s why Optimus Prime is wet. Next time must tell Mommy if you are going to pee, ok? Let’s go change now.”

Before changing into another pair of Transformers Prime underwear, Blake took it from me and said out loud, “Look, Mommy! Optimus Prime and Megatron!” I had to read the words before confirming that he was right. Boys and cars. Goodness me.

At this very moment, he’s running around in his second piece of underwear for the day, without shorts on. Seems like he is pretty comfortable with the Autobots protecting his privates instead of diapers! Haha.

^{This post was written on 6 March 2014. Blake’s still not toilet trained yet due to inconsistency, there was a ‘break’ in the weekdays as he isn’t going cold turkey in school yet, but today the teacher messaged me and said that we can start already! I wonder how many days/weeks/months it’ll take!}