Nighttime Toilet Training - Success at Last

Woohoo! Yippee! Hip Hip Hurrah! Yahoo! Phew! Ok Ok. I'm exagerating but I'm really glad we made it. At last my girl is fully toilet trained for day as well as nighttime. The last mile ie the night toilet training was the hardest hurdle to cross. The daytime training was completed in about 2 weeks about 2 years ago.


What I did wrong:

• grumbled
• complained
• scolded
• nagged

None of the above worked or speeded up the process in any way. Hahaha. She only became fearful, discouraged and lost her self esteem ie became negative and thought she would not be able to do it.

What I did right:

• encouraged
• praised
• took her to pee before sleep and during the night when she stirred (that did not create a habit but rather it helped break the habit of peeing in the diapers or pants as what she used to do)
• waited till she was ready (in this case, she made the move ie she told me she was ready to try)
• dangled a carrot before her (hahaha)

And pictured below here is the carrot. She chose it herself and was happy to stick success stickers for each dry night on her calander. Nice eh? Not my photographic skills of course but the little cute dollhouse with lights that actually work. I wish I were a kid again. Nevermind, I can play together with her. Lol!

Bye Bye Diapers

My girl has stayed dry at night for 16 days consecutively now with no accidents in between. Yahoo!!!! I can now kiss the diapers goodbye since my boy is already off it. Hubby says he feels a little bit sad. It means they are growing up fast. He is a sentimental fella. That hubby of mine.

I don't fee sad. I feel happy. Happy that we are saving money on diapers. Happy that its now much easier for me not to have to change diapers anymore. Taking them to the toilet to wee wee is much easier and cheaper too.

The reward system has worked out very well. My girl is happy to stick the stickers on her calander and countdown the days till her reward, a toy she picked out for herself. She is also happy and feels a sense of achievement and pride. It helps promote a positive feeling overall and better self esteem as well. I have a feeling she will love that toy she has worked so hard towards getting the most of all.

Now we're also using the reward system to get her to wear her own shoes and its worked out very well too. Reward is certainly much better than punishment and yields better results.

Night Toilet Training Progress

Today is the fourth consecutive day the bed has stayed dry in the morning. A fourth day of continuous success with no breaks in between. Success means waking up once in the middle of the night or early morning to get my girl to pee. At least thats much better then waking up to clean wet clothes, bedsheets and blankets!

This gives her the positive feeling of achievement too instead of waking up to a another wet bed and failure. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the turning point to real success.

I remember waking up one night to wash wet clothes, wet bedsheets and blankets despite having the protective mat on as well as dealing with tears of unhappiness. And whats worse was I had to do it all over again that same morning! Boy! Was I frustrated. My husband took one look at my unhappy face and said "Maybe you should just put her back on the diapers since she's not ready and it makes you so unhappy." I believe, he says this because it annoys him to see my grumpy face first thing in the morning before he goes to work.

I said "I can't put her back on diapers because she initiated this. She was motivated enough to said she wanted to be off diapers now. So I cannot do it." "Then don't be so grumpy and unhappy over it" he says. Sure its easy for him to say that as well as suggest this and that. He's not the one doing it!!!! Ok. I'm done ranting. Please wish me success and good sleep throughout the following nights.

Mothering is really hard work

Being a mother is really a tough job. Its not easy to be woken up from sleep to feed hungry babies and change dirty diapers, to feed reluctant little mouths, to get charged up little ones to go to bed, to answer endless questions from inquisitive little minds, chase playful little ones around to change their clothes and the list goes on and on.

And thats why I've resisted having a helper or a maid for as long as I could. The reason is due to human nature. I'll explain why.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I now have a part-time helper. And due to the lazy human nature, I must say that I am tempted, very very tempted, to ask the part time helper to feed, bathe, change, wash dirty smelly little bottoms and do all the other "hard" parts of motherhood while I just sit back and do the easy part of playing, loving and cuddling them. Hahaha.