How Q Potty Trained Herself

I realize that my last post about potty training makes it seem like it was a breeze getting Q out of diapers. Ha! So not true. The experience reinforced a lot about what we have come to expect about life with Q: she does something when she is ready, not when we are. Examples: sleeps in her crib or goes to bed by herself or weans (she's now in a Big Girl bed by the way).

This is how it went down and it covers almost an 11 month period -

Q sorta, sometimes used the potty. Q did not like us suggesting it. Q began to fight it. We moved. We gave up on potty training. We decided that we would be traveling for 2 weeks and we would wait until we got back. We got back. Q refused refused refused. We offer sticker charts, prizes, m&m's, picking out her own big girl underwear, the fact that you need to be in underwear to take ballet. Q asks for a suitcase if she uses the potty. We agree. She uses the potty, is given the suitcase, reverts to accidents. Suitcase is take away. Q doesn't care. By this point, I am extremely pregnant with Z. I am informed either get Q trained before the baby comes as otherwise it will never happen OR even if I train her now, she'll regress after the baby is born and it won't matter. Lovely.

I choose to do nothing. As I tell some friends, I'm taking a laid-back (or half-assed) attitude towards potty training. Q is almost 3. She knows where the potty is. She has the basic idea.  Then, one day, a month before her 3rd birthday, Q asks to wear underwear. She begins to use the potty. There are some slip ups, but, by and large, Q is fully out of diapers ... and has her suitcase back.

Q's Suitcase