Alistair Lattimore

When Claire and I embarked on the toilet training process with Hugo, other than the obligatory accidents that were going to happen along the way, I never thought it’d be that big a deal.

It turns out that when you’re a three year old child, who has been happily going to the toilet in a nappy for the past few years – changing that behaviour is a big deal.

We’d been telling Hugo that since he is big boy now and wearing undies, that he needs to use the toilet and that doing it in his underwear wasn’t appropriate – which he understood.

For the first phase of the toilet training and getting him to do a wee or number 1 on the toilet, we’d been asking him regularly if he needed to go to the toilet. Of course, in virtually every instance he would tell us that he didn’t need to go to the toilet but we persisted.

After Hugo had done a number of wee’s on the toilet without a lot of fuss, out of the blue he came up to Claire and simply said that he needed to go to the toilet – Claire nearly fell over. We realised at that point, that we just needed to stop asking him and let him tell us when he needed to go and that has been working great.

Now that he was a professional wee’er, Claire and I started asking Hugo if he wanted to do a poo or number 2 on the toilet. We asked and Hugo would say that he didn’t want to do a poo. We prodded him about it and he’d reiterated that he didn’t want to do a poo. We tried convincing him to stay on the toilet a little longer, without success. We discussed with him that his little body needs to do a poo, that everybody poo’s and that it is normal but we got nowhere fast.

Hugo held onto his first poo for a number of days until one morning, just before I was about to head off to work – it came out, in his undies and I think he was devastated it’d happened. He knew and wanted to do one in the toilet but it just didn’t pan out that way and I think it scared him a little. That was the beginning of him stonewalling Claire and I on every single attempt to even discuss him doing a poo on the toilet – he wasn’t interested at all.

Over a week had passed and still no poo from our little man. We tried a few different types of foods, Belinda suggested pear juice, Claire tried prune juice and a strawberry milk – all without any success. We persisted and continued to ask him semi-regularly like we’d been doing trying to get him to do a wee and prompted him every time he was on the toilet but still no luck. Then one day, Claire convinced Hugo that he should have another go, she was sitting on the floor of the toilet for support, which he wanted but then insisted that she didn’t watch and plop, his first poo on the toilet!

We thought that now he has done his first poo on the toilet, it’ll be like what happened with doing a wee on the toilet, he’ll be an old hat at it in no time. Turns out that wasn’t the case and he held onto the next one for several days & then on Boxing Day another present arrived in his undies.

Not to be disheartened, he’d be going to the toilet for a wee like an absolute champion so we just kept asking him from time to time if he needed to do a poo, but he wasn’t that interested again. At this stage, we were hoping it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the previous time where he held it in for over a week.

This afternoon we were rewarded with an absolutely amazing big boy act, he told me that he needed to do a wee. I helped him get organised for that and left him be and then I hear a plop followed by an excited voice exclaiming “I did a poo Daddy, I did a poo!”. I nearly couldn’t believe it, I wasn’t sitting with him in the toilet, I didn’t ask him while he was on the toilet and it just happened.

Claire and I are so proud of Hugo for doing a poo on the toilet, especially since we didn’t even need to help him out this time. Hugo is really proud of his achievements as well, he asks Claire and I if we’re proud of him and if Grand Ma, Grand Dad & Granny are proud of him also – it really is a delight to see such enthusiasm and excitement on his face and in his voice.

Now we just need to keep at it and with a bit of luck, it’ll begin to happen on a slightly more regular schedule and next thing we know – he’ll be a professional poo’er as well!

A few months ago Claire and I thought we’d begin the toilet training process with Hugo. At the time, he was quite interested in it but despite our best efforts and Hugo generally wanting to participate in the whole exercise, we didn’t make it very far.

After putting toilet training on the back burner for a couple of months, this week Claire thought she’d give it another go and see how Hugo responded this time around. Off with the nappy, on with his tiny undies and the toddler toilet training had begun.

We have a potty downstairs and a little ladder with a smaller seat attached upstairs. I was thinking if he was going to make any progress early on, it’d be on the potty. To my surprise however, Hugo has taken to the normal toilet with his ladder really well.

During the week I got a call from Claire, where she was so excited she nearly jumped down the phone line to tell me that Hugo had just done his first wee on the toilet.  Claire gave the phone to Hugo and he proceeded to tell me that he’d done a “big wee” several times.

Today Hugo has been without his nappy and in his underwear virtually all day, in which time we’ve had two big wee’s on the toilet. We tried to persuade Hugo that maybe he should think about doing a poo as well but that was a bit much at this stage.

I’m so excited about the whole thing really, our little boy is growing up.