Let's Talk About Readiness
We started potty training, and I don't think I was ready
When we talk of our babies hitting milestones, we are advised to wait until they show signs of readiness. For example, how do you know that they are ready to eat food? Well, can they sit up for longer than 10 minutes? Are they able to hold their heads independently? Do they reach out for your food? All these - and more are signs of readiness that should give you the go ahead to start offering them solid food.
Signs of readiness are there to help guide us on when best to introduce something to our babies, or help them master a new skill. We get so proud when they finally develop a skill like walking or identifying colours and I am sure they are quite proud of themselves too. However, there is a side of this coin that I think we severely overlook.
Is the parent showing signs of readiness too?
Let me explain.
Last week, we decided that it was time to help our daughter learn how to use the potty. She is almost 2 and has been showing signs that she is ready. She can verbally communicate when number two happens and seems to know when her diaper is full. She also shows some control over her bladder since she can have long dry moments. Additionally, she has been coming with me to the loo for the past one month and seems quite curious to learn what’s going on in there.
We thought that this would be the perfect time to try out potty training since her sibling isn’t here yet (2 more months to go). We bought two types of potties, swapped diapers for underwear and began the journey.
We would take her to the toilet every 30 minutes and encourage her to use it. She hesitated sitting on the potty at first but after a couple of tries, she was comfortable enough to sit on the toilet and tell us stories. The hard part was communicating with her on what she was meant to do. We still didn’t have a word for it so we resorted to making her laugh or sneeze, anything to get those lower muscles working. Undoubtedly, nothing came out but we were hopeful
In between the toilet visits, she had many accidents. At first, she was confused by them and seemed understandably uncomfortable with her cold underwear. This my friends, is what I was not ready for. I wasn't ready to clean up poop in underwear. I wasn’t ready for the anxiety of looking at her face to figure out if we had an accident or not. I wasn’t ready to keep going to the toilet EVERY 30 MINUTES!
Do you know how often that is to keep returning to the same place.
What I was definitely not ready for is how comfortable she eventually became with wetting her self. She would do it and move on with her day like nothing happened 😫
I wasn't ready for any of this.
By day two, we threw in the towel. We were exhausted because we moved the toilet runs from 30 mins to 20 mins. We also missed very many accidents because she now learnt to pee immediately she was out of the toilet 🤦🏾♀️
I was done washing underwear, I was over finding wet spots around the house and a couple of my husbands trousers were caught in the line of fire. I don’t think she was truly ready and I know now that we DEFINITELY were not…and it’s okay.
As a parent, I think it’s important for us to be okay with not being ready to handle something that we think our kids needs. It’s okay to delay taking them to school because we aren’t ready to let go. It’s okay to take a few more months to finally go on that couple’s vacation because we aren’t ready to leave them behind. It’s okay to delay potty training in spite of other kids her age doing it and a lot of the Internet telling you that it needs to happen NOW.
We also need to be ready, don’t you think?
From the podcast
I missed releasing an episode last week because of what I would call technical problems. The audio I recorded wasn’t the best and would really not do that story justice, so as I needed a little extra time to think through viable options. Hopefully I can get that story to you soon because it touches on something we have all struggled with at some point in our lives…FORGIVENESS
Did you catch the first Special episode?
In other fantastic news, I still can’t get over the fact that I had Jenny Best, founder of Solid Starts on the podcast. When I started this podcast almost a year ago, I could’t imagine that at one point I would have the guts to just shoot my shot!
I love Jenny because she introduced me to a new way of thinking about how we introduce food to our babies, and as a firm believer of Baby Led Weaning it was great sitting down with her and talk about what it is, questions around it and also reflect on my own weaning journey.
I had quite a bit of fun producing this episode with my favourite part definitely being the snippets of audio from my daughter’s earlier feeding sessions! Listen to it here, or through this tiny fancy widget 👇🏾
Something to check out
As my daughter grows, the thought of school becomes bigger and bigger. I have several ideas of what I would like for her, but I am still in search of a lot information. If you are like me, I think this series by Zain Nasser (@playroom.ke) on the various types of education systems will be very handy.
In this episode, she talks to an expert on everything CBC, the new curriculum used in Kenya. I haven’t watched it yet, but it is definitely on my to do list.
WATCH: Introduction to CBC Part 1
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Love
Sally