Many people have asked me how potty training is going, so here is the update. It is pretty much the same as it was two months ago when I wrote the first Poop Goes in the Potty post — we are good with pee and not with poop. However Will will now poop on the potty without me sitting next to him, and he is waking up in the middle of the night to ask to go pee in the potty.

Will does great with pee; infrequently having an accident and he will go on his own, even away from the house. Our problem is with pooping. He doesn’t care about having poop in his underwear, so he will go a little bit then stop it and avoid going on the potty. This will happen several times a day, and up to five some days. When we notice the poop we have him get on the potty and try to push some poop out; sometimes he will and sometimes he won’t. At the end of the day, he just doesn’t care and nothing we do makes him care. Rewards and consequences haven’t worked.

Not that I like cleaning up poop filled underwear, but I am at the point where I think that nothing I do will make him care so we should just do nothing and let him do what he wants. This process has confirmed that he will do things on his own terms when he is ready. It would mean that he doesn’t have a consequence for pooping in his underwear, but he also doesn’t get a reward when he goes poop in the potty after not pooping in his underwear. I just don’t know how to make him care and think that eventually he will care on his own. He will care, right?

I am so beaten down with this that I am ready to just do nothing. It is hard not to get mad, but I really don’t know what else to do.

The biggest issue with doing nothing (besides the cleaning of the underwear) is that it delays teaching him to pee standing up. With Jack I waited to let him stand until pooping was good and established and that was my plan with Will. However, Will starts preschool in two weeks and he is starting to wake up in the night and ask to go potty. Both of these are accomplished much easier when he stands — they take less time and less hassle with clothing (because he still sits backward on the potty which means he has to take everything off or needs help sitting frontwards with clothes on his legs).

Believe me, I am worried about him pooping in his underwear at preschool and me having to come clean him up or him having to do it by himself, but maybe that will be a motivator for him. The standing to go pee is a much bigger issue in my mind. I just want to make sure that he will sit to go poop. I have heard horror stories of parents who started boys standing early and then they refused to sit and would only poop in their pants.

What do you think we should do? Should we give up for a while and let him do what he is going to do or continue with some other plan? Should we teach him to stand and gamble that he will still sit to poop when needed?

Saturday morning we went cold turkey into potty training; straight into underwear (except for naptime and at night — I am not that crazy). I have been feeling the pressure to get Will potty trained by September when he will start preschool. So, armed with lots of underwear, jelly beans and prizes we jumped in with both feet.

With Jack, we did the slow-burn method. He wore pull-ups for several months and we worked at going in the potty. Then we phased in underwear once he was staying dry in the pull-ups. It felt like it took forever, but it worked for Jack. Will is a completely different kid.

The biggest difficulty we are finding is that most things don’t faze Will. He simply is not bothered by much and he doesn’t really care if he is wet or dirty. In diapers he rarely came and asked to be changed and so far we are the ones that usually notice that he is wet or dirty, even in his underwear. For these reasons, kids that are more sensitive or particular about the way they feel, etc. should present an advantage during this process, recognizing there are always exceptions.

So we jumped right in with the underwear this weekend. It seemed to be the method that most people, including our pediatrician, thought would work for Will. Boy has it been hard. Sunday morning I was ready to give up. Although he would sometimes pee when he would sit on the potty, he refused to poop. I had cleaned up mushy poop out of his underwear, and off of me, him and the toilet. We had more wet underwear than dry.

Then this morning he pooped on the potty TWICE! Sure the first time I caught him right before and practically pooped it out myself to get him to go, but he did it. Full disclosure, a half hour after the second poop he pooped in his pants again; we can’t win them all right? He is still having pee accidents too. I think for some reason he doesn’t push all the pee out each time, so he pees more frequently. I am going to try putting some cheerios or fruit loops in the toilet to make it fun to try and pee on them.

We have tried to stay at home where he can just be in underwear with no pants, but since we do have lives and I would go insane being trapped at home with nothing but excrement, we have ventured out. When we leave, I put plastic pants over his underwear, so he will still feel wet if he has an accident, but we don’t make a big mess for others or in his car seat. He tends to have the most accidents, understandably, when we are away. Hopefully that will get better over time.

I guess we are making slow and steady progress. I am trying to remember that we will have progress, then set-backs and it is all normal. For us, potty training is one of the most difficult aspects of parenting. So please send your good potty thoughts our way and if you have any advice I will gladly accept them.

Linking up with Pour Your Heart Out! at Things I Can’t Say.