No-pressure potty training

Hear ye, hear ye: I have discovered the secret to stress-free potty-training!

I know what you may be thinking, but no: This method does not require you to set aside a magic number of days in which to train your child. Nor does it involve forcing liquids or making your kid go bottomless. And as for elaborate sticker charts or reward systems? Absolutely not necessary.

No, to potty train without stress, I've discovered that you need just two things: A healthy kid and time.

Of course, it took me until after my third time around the potty-training block to realize this. Before that:

• Lucy easily mastered going #1 in the potty within 3 days just before their 2nd birthday in December 2010, but she refused to go #2 in the potty—waiting every day to poop in her pull-up at nap time—until their 3rd birthday (she even announced a few weeks ahead of time that this was when she would start doing it, the little stinker). 
• Jude, who got off to a great start in March 2011 (a couple of months after the kids turned 2), also knew exactly what he was doing but was irresponsible enough (with #1 and #2) for so long that we kept him in pull-ups until just after their 3rd birthday. 
• Dahlia was not ready when we tried to train her at the same time as Lucy, but when we made another attempt with her in May 2011 (when the kids were almost 2.5 years old), she proved that she was more than ready by mastering #1 and #2 in the potty within 3 days.

Based on these experiences, I'd decided to not even think about training Isaac for the foreseeable future—with his communication delays and sensory issues, I honestly couldn't imagine the day when he would be ready to train. People had assured me that he would see his siblings using the potty and want to do the same, but it just wasn't happening.

I did realize, however, that I had one advantage: I knew that Isaac liked to hide in the hallway when he needed to poop. So a couple of months ago I got brave and—contrary to conventional wisdom, which says that kids learn to go #1 in the potty before they learn to go #2 in the potty—I started putting him on the potty whenever I'd catch him hiding. He didn't like it at first, but I casually persisted. And my vigilance worked: Once he had his first success with pooping in the potty, he never looked back. I couldn't believe it had been that easy!

Finally! Four potties crowding the bathroom floor.

Scared to push my luck, I pushed all thoughts of pee-training him to the back of my mind. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that he was keeping his pull-up dry for hours at a time. So I decided to take things to the next level and started putting him on the potty every time I found him dry. At first he had no idea what I expected him to do, but when he finally had a success, it was like a light bulb went off in his head! Over the weekend, he even demonstrated that he can stay dry all day! And although he hasn't been completely accident-free since then, I now know that he knows exactly what he's doing when it comes to going potty. At age 3.5 ... not too shabby!

So there you have it, folks. The secret is simple: Wait until your kid shows undeniable physical signs of being ready, and then put him on the potty, calmly and consistently, until he realizes what he's supposed to do. No stress, no mess! Now that's my kind of potty training.

Stoplights and marbles

There's a new sheriff in town:

Our refrigerator chart

Here's how it works: Every morning, the kids all start out on green (happy face). Throughout the day, bad behavior such as talking back or not listening can get you moved to yellow (worried face). You have two chances to make a better choice before you land on yellow, but some infractions (such as hitting) will land you directly on red (sad face). You can get back on green by being obedient, kind, helpful, or otherwise having a better attitude.

If you are on green at the end of the day, you get to put a marble in a jar; landing on red at any time, however, means that you must take a marble out of the jar. When the jar is filled, you get a big prize! Right now the kids are working toward a trip to a cafe (something that they've been begging to do after seeing one on TV) and they are almost there:

Our marble jar 
(full for the purpose of demonstration)

Lucy, Jude, and Dahlia are highly motivated by this system because it's what their teacher used in preschool last semester and they understand what the stakes are. Since Isaac was in a different classroom, however, he is still learning just what this green/yellow/red business means. He does get a kick out of putting a marble in the jar, though—so much so that, even though we have not yet formally tried to potty train him, he now goes #2 exclusively in the potty just for the chance to "putta narble inna jar":

So proud of himself!

And I think that, alone, makes our stoplight system a resounding success!

Second time's a (potty) charm

They say that if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So over the long Memorial Day weekend, that's exactly what we did: Five months after giving up on potty training Dahlia, we finally got back in the saddle and put her back on the potty. And this time, she got it!

"Welcome back, potty sister!"

Or perhaps I should say that we got it: If there's one thing we've learned from potty training multiple kids within a short time frame, it is that every kid is different—and not every kid is ready at the same time. Lucy, for example, responded wonderfully to the 3-day method just before the kids turned two. Jude, on the other hand—despite an auspicious beginning at 26 months—did not stay reliably dry until we made a few adjustments to the 3-day method, including putting him on the potty at regular intervals and coming up with a much better prize than M&Ms.

For Dahlia, we decided to once again follow the basic principles of the 3-day method. This time, however, we started with a few tweaks, right off the bat, based on what we learned about her during the first round. For instance, since her biggest hurdle is her insistence on holding it until she busts, if we know she needs to go, we now make her sit on the potty until she does. And guess what? It's working so well that she is even going #2 on the potty, something that our two veteran potty-trainees have yet to master. Go, Dahlia!

Oh, man!

Almost every time Jude tells us that he needs to go potty, he follows up his request with a perfect imitation of the "Dora the Explorer" villain's catchphrase: "Oh, man!" We don't know exactly why he adopted this exclamation as a potty mantra, although I suspect that, at some point—perhaps after the millionth "potty gin!" in a row—I might have given him the idea by saying, "Oh, man!" in exasperation. One thing is for certain: We hear, "Oh, man!" a lot around here—and it makes me laugh every time. What makes it even funnier is that the phrase is always accompanied by a signature arm move and followed by the proper citation: "Fox. On Dora." Check out our little comedian in action:

Potty 'gin!

They say that time heals all wounds, and I suppose two months was just about enough for us to forget how difficult the first round of potty training was. So today we finally took the plunge (no pun intended) and gave Jude his turn on the potty!

Because he's been showing signs of readiness for a while now, I was pretty sure he'd do well. I was completely unprepared, however, for just how ready he was to pichí in the potty: All we really had to do was put him in big boy underwear and let him see Lucy get an M&M as a reward for using the potty—after that, all he wanted to do was "potty 'gin!" He was so excited about using the potty that he did not have even one accident all day!

We'll see how the next few days go, but really, we couldn't have asked for a better start to round 2 of potty training. If Jude can keep this up, it's two down, two to go—wish us luck!

Pichí in the potty!

If you are thinking that this is going to be a post about potty training, you are correct! Less than 2 weeks ago (the day after our snow fun, in fact), Ted and I took a deep breath and, with my mom's invaluable help, started our quest to train the girls.

Based on a recommendation from fellow quad mom Suz Steece, we used the 3-day potty-training method. Basically, the author says that if you follow her method to the letter, your kid will be fully potty-trained in 3 days. She also claims that the best time to potty-train is at 22 months. I figured that since my mom would be in town around the time the kids hit the adjusted age of 22 months—and since the girls, in particular, have been so interested in removing their clothing and diapers over the past few months—it couldn't hurt to try!

A few days before my mom arrived, though, I chickened out of training all four kids at once—and I am so glad I did. Even with three adults on potty-training duty, taking care of the girls while not neglecting the boys was nearly impossible. And forget about getting anything extra done around the house! All we did while my mom was here was watch for signs that the girls needed to go; say "Tell me if you need to go pichí in the potty!" about a million times; and run the girls to the potties for every accident, success, and false alarm (of which there were many).

The first couple of days were a nightmare, with big accidents left and right. (We did decide to go against the 3-day method's advice and use pull-ups during naps and nighttime; I can't even imagine how much worse it would have been if the girls had been sleeping in their panties!) After the third day, though, we were rewarded: Lucy got it!! (The pee part, anyway—we're still working on putting #2 in the potty.) She has now been accident-free for a week, and we are very proud of her (but probably not as proud as she is of herself!). 

Potty sisters: Lucy and Dahlia
(you can see some of the tattoos they got for going pichí in the potty)

Dahlia, however, has been a different story. She knows when she has to go, but she refuses to relieve herself until she absolutely can't hold it any longer. Unfortunately, this usually ends up being when she is not sitting on the potty. During the last couple of days, she had even starting throwing tantrums when we tried to sit her on the potty, so today (with the blessing of our pediatrician) we finally threw in the towel and put her back in diapers. We will try again in about a month or when she lets us know that she's ready to be a big girl like Lucy, whichever comes first.

Looking back, I wish that I had tried training just Lucy first, since she is the one who showed the most awareness of her wet or dirty diaper. And I have decided that, going forward, I will definitely train one kid at a time (the jury is still out on whether we will use the 3-day method again). I don't know how other families of multiples manage to train everyone at once with the 3-day method—call me a wimp, but trying to train both girls together (even with the help of Ted and my mom) was truly one of the worst weeks of my life!

Oh, and did I mention that all this was going on during the crib-escaping drama, the Christmas holiday, and the birthday party? Yeah, we could really use a vacation right about now!