I started trying to potty train my daughter when she was 16 months old. For some reason she wouldnt go in the potty, but she started potty training her doll. Then I had my son when she was 20 months. So we stopped for a while. I figured she needed to get used to the baby, and that was more important.
We started potty training again shortly after her second birthday. We did the timer until we acctually caught a “pee-pee” and something clicked and she has peed in the potty ever sense. We did the same thing for bowel movements, and she had woken up with a dry diaper every morning since she was about 14 months, so she was completely potty trained at 25 months…or so I thought.
Then, one day, I told her she couldn’t do something and she got mad and pooped herself (something she still does if she’s sufficiently mad at me). I hasnt realized that the “mad at mommy, and messing self” were related yet and thought it was an accident. So I said “uh oh! you had an accident, lets get you cleaned up.” That one time was all she needed to regress entirely. I tried everything I could think of, the timer again, sticker rewards, getting in trouble, making her rinse out her training pants…nothing seemed to help. The only time she was potty trained was at night. I had to move the carpet shampooer into the bedroom closet because I was using it every day — sometimes several times a day. Then, two weeks ago, I was eating some homemade chocolate and she walked up to me and said “mama, I want chocolate, please chocolate?” I looked at her, and had an idea. “No. Edward poopoos in his diaper because he is a baby. Babies can’t have chocolate, they are too little. You poopoo in your panties, you must be a baby, so you can’t have chocolate. Only big girls who poopoo in the potty can have chocolate.” She glared at me and melted to a flood of tears. I stepped over her feeling somewhat like a meanie. The next day, we had no misses. Every time she has a bowel movement she gets 5 chocolate chips, if she misses, she forfeits all chocolate chips for the rest of the day, and we’ll try again tomorrow. In the last two weeks, we’ve only had 1 miss — because she was mad at me. So, it took us until she was 32 months, and a bribe, but finally I think we are making some progress.
This post is part of a link up with 
I originally somehow manage to link the wrong post, if you got directed to the birthday post, I’m really sorry! I got into a disagreement with the linky tool and didn’t realize it.
