It is an accepted fact around here that the jelly beans were a serious potty motivator. Sure, five months later he is still asking for them at least half the time he goes, but a few jelly bellies a day is a small price to pay for a diaper free life, in my opinion. Plus I figure at some point the jelly bean reward will be his college roommate’s problem, not mine, right.
Bribery worked so well for the potty, I had no problem at all applying it to our next issue, which is that Gatito has been joining us in bed with increasing frequency. The truth is that I quite like having him in our bed, and I like being piled in with him and A and the cats. But I don’t think it’s great for a marriage, and what started out as every once in a while gradually increased in frequency until we got to three nights in a row and I figured it was time to do something about it.
Something turned out to be a chart, with a picture of a car, divided into seven segments. Each night that Gatito stays in his own bed till morning, he gets to color in a segment, and after a week, he gets a car. This is the seventh night, so if all goes well, tomorrow is Car Day. I just don’t know what happens after that. Will he only sleep in his bed with the promise of a car? Do we extend the next challenge from a week to a month? Is it a non-issue, now that he’s gotten used to sleeping alone again?
If you have ever offered rewards your kids for certain behavior, how did you transition away from the rewards without messing up the behavior?
hmm. all Iknow is that I got M&M’s when I went potty until I was onto my mom and sat on that thing just for a candy. And my mom grew livid and threw all the M&M’s in the garbage in front of me. And then declared them evil by reasons of Yellow #5.
And I haven’t gone to the loo since. Kidding!
I heard a story from my mother this weekend about my potty training. She would bribe me with pickles. ?? I am currently out of diapers so I suppose the method worked, but ?? pickles.
We did the “chart” thing with N (#1) when she was potty training … (after so many days dry she’d get to go pick out a train of her choice of Thomas the Train trains)… I think we had to do 3 or 4 charts (of 7 -10 days) before we grew out of that one.
I promise the chart won’t go on forever. Once the behavior has been modified in the way you want it, just don’t talk too much about the chart… Let him bring it up… Chances are, he’ll forget
Oh… I guess we did the same thing with K (#2) when she was having trouble going to sleep at night without coming in 7 MILLION times …. Again, after a few charts and rewards, they just faded. Try fading with the jelly beans…. Or offer them less often, not every time he goes potty, but sometimes…. (Intermittent schedules are actually the most effective… says the research psychologist who is NOT a behaviorist, but had to teach it.)
I have the opposite problem – I think I got too chart happy (bedtime, potty) that he’s so over it. A sticker with the promise of a train just doesn’t do it for him anymore. He hasn’t thought to ask for a better or different reward and I’m hesitant to go there, so we’re kind of stagnating right now, with mediocre potty skills and haphazard overnight visits to our bedroom. I don’t know what to do either, other than let it ride for a while and see how things progress.
We had to wean off the prizes. M&Ms did not work for potty training our guy. Well, not for pooping in the potty. For that we had to up the ante/bribes and had a Poop Prize Box. Each time he successfully pooped in the potty, he could choose a prize (Cars figurine, coloring book, crayons, etc.). We weaned him off it within a month by showing him how many prizes were left and saying that when they were gone, he was a big boy and could pick out a toy at the store to celebrate. He chose a toy car (surprise, surprise). Briefly after this the Poop Prize Box became a toy prison for when he’d willfully not poop in the potty, a toy would be put back into the box until he earned it again through good potty choices. Now it’s unnoticed and unnecessary.
Wow I like Heather’s idea! We are not there yet, maybe a few more months, but will keep it in mind. I have a feeling M&M’s aren’t going to work for our kid.
We did M&M’s with Brody for potty training. One day we were out, so I told him that big boys don’t need candy every time they go potty. That was that!
Now if only I could figure out a way to get him to poop in the potty I’d be set.