I wouldn’t go so far as to say Amelia potty trained herself. But once we made her start, she pretty much did. A few months ago we tried taking diapers off and she resisited. She held it in and then the minute I was out of the room she went on the carpet. She screamed when we took her to the potty. So we decided to wait. Once she turned 3, we decided to try again. I was very apprehensive because of what had happened last time. But I was willing to try for a couple days to see.
First we got what is now called “The Potty Training Machine”.
We just wanted to encourage her to sit on the potty, even if she didn’t go, so she gets a coin to put in the machine whenever she sits. A coin yields 2-3 M&Ms. Anyway, to make a medium sized story short, she just goes when she needs to! She does not go when I ask her to. She does not go before we leave for the library if she doesn’t need to. She usually does not go even if I offer her extra candy (like before we go shopping). She goes when she needs to! I do take it upon myself to remind her and talk about going, so she is thinking about it and knows to go when she needs to. Because she has had accidents when she just forgets. She is so independent, she doesn’t want to go when someone else tells her to. Against my judgment we also took diapers off at night and she is doing great! Again, she doesn’t always go right before bed, because in her words, “Pee pee is coming up my body, not coming down my body.” But we wake her up when we go to bed to take her and often she’ll go then.
The first day we took her diapers off, I asked Kathryn to tell Amelia about how to go on the potty. It was so cute!
Anyway, the point is, that Amelia is just doing it her way and it is awesome. No taking her to the potty every 15 minutes or whatever. (Of course that method did work well for Kathryn). It is awesome to just have one kid in diapers! He just inherited a couple more boxes of diapers so we’re good to go for a long time.
