Gut-based parenting

When Jared turned a year old, I started to get 'friendly advice' or questions from a variety of people along the lines of "So is he still on a bottle? He is? oh...". No one spelled out doomsday for the 18 year old still on a bottle, but it was obvious that I wasn't "following the path" that was expected. I hadn't planned on getting him off a bottle anytime soon as I knew that there were no dental issues to worry about for quite a while. But at 15 months, I caved. Over the period of a few weeks I changed bottles to sippy cups. We still had milk with our nighttime routtine, but it was in a sippy and not a bottle.

Well guess what... he didn't drink as much from a sippy as he ever did from a bottle. Still doesn't. And over the last year he's been gaining weight much more slowly than I would like. I'd be happy with him at the weight he's at, if he would just stay in a roughly consistent percentile... what concerns me is that when I don't specifically watch for it (and spike his milk with cream, encourage high-calorie eating, reduce filling carbohydrates, etc), his percentile drops with each doctor visit. So here we are, at two years old, and he's drinking 6-10oz of milk per day, when it's "supposed to be" [i.e. if you follow all The Rules which we don't, but it's still good to have as a general reference point] several times that. I'm considering re-introducing the bottle, perhaps the familiarity and comfort will make him want to drink more.

At any rate, the reason I ramble on is that we are now at the age where people are starting to ask "Is he potty trained?".

...I need to interrupt myself here to tell what I think is an amusing story that will likely not even cause you to crack a smile if you don't know the little boy in question. My now 5.5 year old nephew had many difficulties with potty training. I remember one thanksgiving dinner when he was in the middle of the long process, his dad picked up a play phone and said "Oh hello Kelsie... What's that, Kelsie? You're going POOP on the POTTY? Wow, Malcolm, did you hear that? Kelsie went POOP on the POTTY!" and then handed it over to my nephew. When Jared started to play with toy phones, David and I got no end of giggles out of each other by pretending that Kelsie was calling us as well from the potty, or immediately after the potty. See, now wasn't that funny?...

We own a potty, we think he knows what it's for, he sits on it clothed sometime which amuses him to no end, he's often good about telling us when his diaper needs changing, etc... many of "The Signs" you're supposed to watch for are clicking into place... but we're just not forcing the issue. One reason is that we've got another babe coming later this year, and I:

A) don't want to potty train a youngster while 6+ months pregnant or with a brand-spankin'-newborn around
B) don't want to deal with the inevitable accidents once he's no longer wearing diapers and
C) I figure he's going to regress as soon as the baby comes and demand diapers anyway, so why bother? [on a related note, I have been using this as an excuse for a lot of things recently.]

My gut tells me there's no need to rush it. He's a reasonable kid. He'll let us know when he's really ready. And three years from now, if we're still struggling with it, I may look back on this and say "you fool!"... but at least I will know that I went with my gut. I think I can handle being wrong; I just don't like feeling like I was untrue to myself and didn't stand up for what I felt was best for my kid.

And on a related note, I think we're going to be a two-crib family for at least the next year. Why rush the transition to a Big Boy Bed? There are so many nice perks to cribs, not the least of which is that mama doesn't have nightmares about her boy frolicking around his room or the house in the middle of the night, unsupervised. I do admit that I really want to get him this bed, that I know he would love:

But it just doesn't feel right in my gut.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

What kind of sippy cups do you use? Dorothy will scarcely drink anything out of many of them, but she can suck down a full cup of milk from one of the First Years semidisposable ones in nothing flat. They don't have a valve, so they're easier to drink from. They're also not totally spillproof, but we haven't had any major problems with them.

I think kids can stay in the crib until the day they learn to climb out (at least). One friend of mine discovered that her son had learned to climb out of the crib when she woke up one morning and found him asleep snuggled up next to her. She watched him climb out of the crib and concluded that he was doing it pretty safely, so she just put a padded mat under the crib and let him go. She at least knew that he couldn't fall out of bed, and he had some protection if he did slip while he was climbing.

[Kendra]

I'm not sure how old Jared is (I'm guessing he had a birthday in June and he is now 2???) but DS#1 did not use the potty OR sleep in a Big Boy bed until he was 3. We tried the potty on and off for a year from the time he turned 2. Literally one day he just "got it." It was a week after he turned 3. He told his dad "Daddy - I think I am going to go poopie in the potty" and that was it. He never was a climber so he stayed in his crib until he was 3. Bought hi a big boy bed with President Bush's child credit refund. He has NEVER had an accident but he is a WILD (underline and italicize) sleeper and still has bedrails. Don't fret - someday Jared will just "get it" and may not be for another year.....

[Cynical]

Elizabeth: Every brand under the sun =) I have spent way too much money on them. Jared just found my stash of "These ones don't work so well" upstairs while we were cleaning today. I have tried the disposables and they're OK but since they aren't spillproof I don't like using them since he's still pretty sloppy.

Kendra: Yep he just turned 2. Good to know - I'm hoping it's that simple for us!

[Anne]

Here's the sign I look for to see if they're ready for potty-training: the preschool says they can't go unless they're out of diapers!

[MaryGarth]

Our #2 kid stopped taking a bottle cold turkey at about 6 months (we'd been giving him one or two a day along with breast feeding, but we went away for a long weekend and figured we'd just do breast while away to make things more convenient, and when we got back, he absolutely refused ever to take a bottle again).

We started in on sippy cups as soon as we could, and he was reasonably coordinated with one. Over the course of the two years that followed, he dropped all the way off the weight charts--below 0% for his age. For a while we (or at least I) agonized, tried to supplement everything he ate (I know all about the adding cream/cheese/etc.), and eventually (with pediatrician #1) put him through a bunch of tests to see if there was some problem that was causing the low weight. The best thing that ever happened to us was having that pediatrician leave the practice, and having a more experienced, older pediatrican take us over.

He basically said, 'I don't think there's anything wrong with this kid--he's very small-boned, you two are both slim, no toddler with enough food put in front of him is going to starve, he's just a kid who happens to be at the bottom of the weight curve.'

With that, much of our worry lifted. Same kid, at 8, is perfectly healthy, strong, and skinny as a rail--it's clearly just his body type.

(We also discovered, along the way, that both kids had high cholesterol, so we had to stop with the extra cream & stuff anyhow...)

[jeweleigh]

Wait till summer for toilet training. Then let him play naked somewhere wipeable.
I tried EVERYTHING: every trick, every type of diaper, every treat, every type of potty, putting him in underwear anyway...
When I let him play on our deck without a diaper. I realized he had NO IDEA when he was about to pee. He looked as shocked as me when he saw the puddle...

[Cynical Mom]

MaryGarth: Well in our case I wouldn't say that our frames are very small :-) But I do appreciate hearing stories of other kids in this situation, makes it easier to not worry.

Jeweleigh: Interesting idea! I think he still doesn't really know when he's peeing although he does seem to know when he's about to poop these days.

And on an unrelated note, the cashier at the grocery store we went to the other day was named Kelsey which amused me to no end.