The Ultimate Reward

Yes we "bribe" our kids into doing things. I suppose some day we'll have to take the hard fast approach of "you have to do it and no your not going to get a sticker for doing it". But for today, bribery it is.

Thus far the girls have gotten stickers for going potty on the potty, little trinkets for going poppy on the potty, and the Sleep Princess has come and left them dollar bills for going to sleep like big girls. All of this in the past 3ish months, I'd guess. Well... it has made an impact. Abby is now completely potty trained, with an occasional accident... if you call getting a towel so you can potty on it an "accident". Ellie now has interest in seriously potty training. We clean up fewer poppy panties. Bedtime has significantly improved. For the first stretch of time in 9 months we aren't pulling our hair out at bedtime night after night. We have room for improvement in all areas, but I feel like we are headed in the right direction.

So I mentioned that Ellie is serious about potty training. She's really making an effort and I believe if we can stick with it for the next few days she'll have it. As you might expect, yes there is a major reward at stake here.

Ellie has been begging for an umbrella ever since we had their pictures taken a couple of months ago. The photo studio had kid umbrellas and they had to have their pictures taken with them. Everywhere we go, every time it rains, every time she thinks about it she talks about going to the store to get a Dora umbrella. Now, she doesn't really know who Dora is, but she saw a Dora umbrella once... at a store we rarely frequent. So that is what she wants. She's also decided that Abby gets the Bob the Builder umbrella. We'll see what Abby has to say about that.

Fact is the kid is going to end up with an umbrella. So, we've attached it to a high stakes task. You go potty on the big potty for 3 days with no accidents and we will go shopping for an umbrella. Why 3 days, because the girl is fixated with 3. She will not hesitate to tell you that she "turned 3 on her birthday cake". Evidently her 3rd birthday cake made a huge impression. We also think that if she can go 3 days, and we know she can, then we'll be over a huge hump.

So last night we looked at the calendar. At the end of the day after having no accidents we got out new special hot air balloon (our recent obsession) stickers and each girl got to put a hot air balloon sticker on day 1. We then talked about the next day and what we needed to do.

This morning she went potty before going to school AND she went to school in training pants without a plastic cover. She did NOT want to wear the plastic pants. Pull-Ups do absolutely nothing for her; they are purely for our convenience. We shall see. Honestly she does the best when she isn't wearing anything on her bottom, but we couldn't really send her to school that way. We sent extra extra clothes and informed her teachers what was up. They were excited and I am confident that they will be of help to us in our efforts.

Ellie is focused on going shopping for her umbrella on Thursday. Well, hopefully we can. If not… we will still go shopping on “Thursday”… it may actually be Saturday, but to her it can be “Thursday”.