Potty Training Backwards

My Son has an obsession with running water. Anywhere we go that there's a fountain, he's making the sign for water and pointing at it saying, "bahbah". He can't get enough. I decided to cash in on his fascination by teaching him how to wash (and dry) his hands. Then the real epiphany came: washing hands is the last step in learning how to potty train.

He had already mastered the last step, so why not teach him the step before that? This was a no-brainer, it involved more running water and it's the thing that most toddlers like to do most: flush the toilet. This step not only proved easy to teach, but easy for him to do..even when it was not appropriate. We would call him into the bathroom after we were finished with our business, and say in an ecxited voice, "flush? flush?" Carrick would run over to the toilet and pull the handle. Then he would turn around to face the sink and put his hands in the air. Sometimes when we would inadvertantly leave the bathroom door open, he would help himself to a flush, and another and another until one of us would make our way to the bathroom. We would politely say, "Great flush!" becuase we didn't want to discourage him, even though this is not the way potty trained people flush. We wanted him to keep at it. He has, and now he's better about only flushing after we're done on the potty or.....

He has his diaper changed. We moved the diaper changing scene into the bathroom. We did this to give him the idea that this is where the action is when it comes to diaper-realated events. Not only does he not kick at me while I'm changing him, but his hands are busy playing with the things in the drawer. That also means that poops are a cleaner process becuase he's not reaching for his pee-pee as soon as the diaper is off. He stands facing the drawers and gets his diaper changed while standing.

The last step that we've mastered lately is him helping to wipe. We let him play with the toilet paper roll while we're going potty. This not only satiates his desire to unroll the toilet paper, but he'll hand it to us, and sometimes put the toilet paper on himself where we would wipe him. When we change his diaper, we let him pull the wipes out of the box and wipe himself. Usually we have to take the wipe and do most of the actual wiping, but the point is, he gets it.

The most encouraging thing about this process is that he's retained what he's learned, so far. I am optimistic about the rest of the potty training process. The next part of potty training will be for him to sit on the big potty while his diaper is off, just for a couple seconds. This will be probably inserted between the removal of the diaper and the wiping stage to keep it consistant with how big people go potty. This will hopefully give him the idea of what the potty is used for and when to use it.

We're just taking it one step at a time.....backwards.