Going in the Toilet: Reloaded

Ben finally pooped in the toilet again today. It was almost a month ago that he had his big breakthrough by going in the potty, and he hadn’t done it again since. He kept on finding somewhere to hide, and going in his underwear, which is massively disgusting to have to clean. At first I took the hard line by punishing him. I was giving him cold showers, and yelling at him. When that didn’t work I knew I was doing something wrong. I looked on the internet, and all of the advice I found there said that I should act like it’s no big deal that he a had an accident, and that I should just encourage him to use the toilet next time. It was about a week ago that Marie, and I adopted this new philosophy, and today it paid off. Whew.

On a related note, I’ve been trying hard to be more patient with Ben. He can cause me to get enormously frustrated, and I tend to be stern with him, because of it. I realized recently what I’ve always known: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so I’ve been making a greater effort to be calm, and encourage him to do what I want rather than barking orders, and of course loads of praise always helps. One thing I learned from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie is to give people a reputation to live up to. For example, with Ben I would tell him how great he is at pooping in the potty, even though he was failing miserably at it. It really works well on kids, and I suspect that it works great with adults as well.