I’m the kind of person who does not like change. I don’t see why everything can’t just stay the same—except, of course, for the things I want to change. If only I were in charge of the world…
One difference between mothering an infant and a toddler/preschooler is that change becomes more gradual. With an infant, every day something is changing. With a preschooler, there are big changes, but they are slower.
Potty training. Big kid bed.
Sleeping and pooping. Throw eating in there and you have every mom’s 3 favorite (or least favorite) topics.
As with most aspects of motherhood, I went into potty training blindly (perhaps with a large dose of denial) and was under the impression using the potty was something with a sharp learning curve. Apparently not. Apparently, you can potty train for weeks and months and—please, no—years. It’s hard for someone without much patience, like me, to wait this change out. (No idea why Baby Galen doesn’t have the patience to sit on the potty for long enough to let something happen!). Especially when I told Baby Galen that I didn’t care when she was ready to potty train, but I did request that she actually be ready. None of this potty excitement one day and “no, no, no!” the next day. For a kid who can be way too decisive at times, she is remarkably indecisive at others.
I already see how this is going. She’s going to very, very slowly use the potty more often and then all by herself and then at some point in the near or distant future she will be potty-trained. It’s like watching a plant grow. It happens so slowly, you don’t even notice.
Except this plant has to be dressed and undressed and changed and have her butt wiped.
I feel a bit more in charge when it comes to the big kid bed (Please don’t laugh. I want to hold on to one last illusion). We have set the age at 3 for converting the crib to the toddler bed. We have told Baby Galen the change is coming. I am stocking up on supplies—like nightlights, clocks that are supposed to keep kids in bed, and books and toys for her to play with when she, inevitably, gets out of bed. I don’t know what to do when she realizes that we don’t actually all go to sleep when she does.
What other changes are coming—or will I be blissfully change-free for a few years?
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Shana Galen, Multitasker Mama
I’m Shana G
alen, AKA Multitasker Mama (and aren’t we all?). I’m a wife, mom to a two-year-old daughter I call Baby Galen. My parenting motto is, “Keep moving. Don’t pass out. Don’t throw up.” Or maybe that’s my fitness motto? www.shanagalen.com
I feel like I can’t keep up with the changes as the kids age. I’m the mother of four children ages nearly 12 down to 5 and just when I think I have one of their various stages sorted….we move on to the next one. With my eldest heading towards teenage years they are the years I fear the most, or more fear that I am most unprepared for. I always imagined myself as the mother of babies and toddlers, but never teenagers lol!
One thing I have learnt from having four children is that they are all different and you can read as many books and soak up as much information as you like but you need to be prepared to ‘go with the flow’ a little….well that seems to apply for us.
I have 3 boys and then a little girl. With the boys I waited until they were nearing 3 before I started toilet training as most of what I had researched said the longer you wait the easier it will be. I can honestly say it wasn’t much trouble at all (with the exception of one son that developed some bowel problems due to food insensitivity). They all took about a week and were okay to go without nappies at night at the same time as they were okay without nappies during the day. My daughter was another kettle of fish and whilst she got it eventually I feel like she was the most inconsistent of all. I have found my daughter is far more head strong than my boys ever were because she will do things when she is good and ready. She is now 5 and still wears a pull up at night because whilst she can have many dry nights…she still has plenty of wet ones too.
Moving from a cot was always easy for us….because with my boys all only having 20 months between them they would get evicted from the cot to make way for the next one! We used a baby gate across their doors so even though they could get out of bed they couldn’t get out of their bedroom. Early on I would find them asleep near the gate but it didn’t take long before they would settle to sleeping in their beds.
Good luck x
Karen, you and I need to trade places. I taught high school and middle school for years and feel much more equipped to deal with a teenager. I like the gate on the door. That’s a good idea.
I was going to say the same thing about the baby gate–we always had one across the door. Many a time I’d walk by and see a little one sleeping on the floor right behind it!!
:>)
So do you pick them up and put them in bed (and risk waking them up)? Or let them sleep on the floor?
I usually put them back in bed at that point. They have tired themselves out and, most of the time, barely wake up!
I picked them up and put them back in bed. Once, I found Dragon sleeping in his bottom drawer. He’d pulled it out somehow then got in and fell asleep. I have a picture somewhere!
But if your child is a light sleeper, by all means throw a blanket on her and let her sleep on the floor. It won’t hurt her every once in a while, if it’s carpeted. :>)
After seven children it’s my opinion that potty training actually starts off being Mommy training, reading the moment training, patience training, how to not throw up when the kid puts their hand in it’s training….
Princessfiona, you are probably an expert. You should hire out your potty-training services! And yes, I think the hardest part is that it is mommy-training.
I think Princess Fiona is a genius full of useful information and a warrior for having survived.
Lisoo, she could probably be the next supernanny!
Oh my goodness…big kid bed? I want to keep my son in his crib as long as possible…because he is contained. I’m nervous at the idea of him getting out of bed and getting into trouble while we blissfully slumber in our room.
Such adorable pictures of Baby Galen! Is that a toy iPhone in the last one? Or your real one? Man, do they LOVE phones!!! Crazy.
Sharon, when they start telling you they want a big kid bed, you have to move them. But three is later than most people wait. The potty training and the big kid bed go together because the kid has to be able to get out of bed to go.
That is not my phone. It’s my dad’s mini camera. But she does love my phone–my big phone (what she calls my iPad) and my little phone.
Sharon, it’s not that hard to baby proof the room so they can’t pull over chest of drawers or bookshelves. We always bolted them to the wall and kept in electrical outlet covers. With a gate on the door, they should be just fine. Plus, they really do have to start hearing that they have boundaries they’re not allowed to cross even if they can. In the old days, no one had gates, no one bolted furniture down, or used electrical outlet covers. So we have to keep in mind that in addition to protecting them from harm, we need to teach our kids listening skills as early as possible. So if you have a gated room, and your child gets out of bed every night–even after you’re telling them not to–then a consequence is in order, IMO.
My children are grown and have children of their own. All of those things that you just feel like “if I can just get through this stage, everything else will be so EASY” sorry to say but you just trade one stage for another with its own set of problems. Don’t look at this in a pessimistic way, but rather that you are grooming a REAL PERSON to go out into the world and take and use the lessons YOU taught them. There are good times along the way of raising children and some pretty yucky ones as well. But, they do grow up. AND – the best part is when they have children of their own and they start going through all of the hassles you endured. That’s when you sit back and smirk into your cup of tea!!
Connie, that must be why my mom laughs every time I call her with a new story.
you have great advice. It’s a journey, not a destination, right?
We are coming out the other end of the potty training stage…um…no pun intended. (Ew.) At 4 1/2, my little guy can make it to the bathroom, but still needs Mom to finish. Sigh. I’m hoping it doesn’t last too much longer.
Both my boys were in single beds by 2 1/2, but that was because:
With the first boy, we had an incoming baby and needed the crib. So he got a single bed with a guard rail netting. He did just fine.
With the second boy, their grandfather bought them a beautiful bunk bed, which we left separate, so they each had their own beds.
I encourage the baby gate, or if you have a climber (we did), then 2 gates on top of each other. I have friends who switched the locks and locked their kids in their room. I cannot express how much I hate that idea and how dangerous I feel it is. :/
Well, good luck…I’m sure you’ll all be fine, and in 20 or 30 years, it’ll be funny. ;D
Olivia, it sounds like you’re almost all done with the potty training. I have a video monitor in my daughter’s room, so I will be able to check up on her when we move her.
We always say that “this too will pass”, no matter what stage we are in. Potty training is tough, because it seems people like to tell you that their child did it by ten months. As for the bed situation, we were terrible at it, and DD ended up in our rooms most nights. One of our neighbors installed half of a Dutch Door to keep her boys in at night.
The Dutch doors are great. We always had an extra high baby gate that was really effective, too. In fact, my 20-year-old just said, “Oh, I remember that gate–it was my greatest nemesis!”
He’s the one who I found sleeping in a bottom drawer he’d pulled out of the chest of drawers.
LOL!!!
Maybe he was trying to find an alternative way out. Sorry kid, no magic wardrobes here…move along.
I like the Dutch doors, but My DD is not sleeping with me. No way.
Hi Shana! I just wanted to let you know that the potty training DOES get better. The great thing with SuperGirl is that she’s “Miss Independent” now–she wants to do everything by herself. Yes, I have to remind her to wipe and wash her hands, but otherwise she can open the bathroom, do her business, and finish everything on her own. It’s SO NICE! Not saying it’s going to take your daughter a short amount of time to be potty trained, but do know that this stage will eventually be complete. =) And yes, stickers as rewards–everytime she goes potty or even sits on the potty–do help! We also bought SuperGirl a “big girls go potty” book (because she’s SUPER-hyped about being a big girl), and she loves it. =) Hang in there!
As for the other surprises, well… I’ll let you know as they come.
Good luck!
Hmm…so the “Do it myself!” thing might actually come in handy. Maybe I can find some way to get her to want to do it herself (or at all). She is pretty hard to bribe, though. I think a candy bar might work, but that’s a lot of candy bars.
Hi Shana,
We have a motto for our son, who is all grown up now and these are no longer issues for him. I won’t go into the potty training, but I can say that he sleeps in a big boy bed now, with his lovely girlfriend of five years standing!
But back to the motto: “In his own way and in his own time.” Our son (our one and only) has always done things a bit differently. He was born three weeks prematurely; I think he did not want to have Halloween as his birthday!
He rolled over, sat up, crawled, and walked, etc, etc, a little later that all of my friends children. He did not crawl until just after his first birthday, then one morning he got up on his hands and knees and just crawled away without all of the months of practice that most babies do. He did the same with walking two months later. He crawled over to a wall, pulled himself up and walked away! I guess he never read all the baby books that I did and he accomplished all of these milestones when he felt ready to do them in one go when he was confident about doing them.
On the other hand, he had a huge vocabulary by the time he was 10-12 months old and was speaking in 12 word sentences by his 2nd birthday! I’m not kidding; I have witnesses! During those first several years he was concentrating more on the verbal aspects of development rather than the physical. We know that all babies and children learn in differing ways. But they all seem to get to the same places in the end. As I said: “In his own way and in his own time.” Just substitute the “his” for “her.”
Shana, all Baby G needs is her own time and all you need is the patience to give it to her. I can assure you that she will not be wearing diapers to college and she’ll have her own bigger girl bed in her dorm room as well.
Hugs to you all,
Flora