Fear and Regression: an Update

First up, fear.
I'm happy to report that it was a very short lived phase. Or at least so far. After nap time on Friday, I asked Oliver if he wanted to visit his stuffed animals in our room and put the ones he wasn't scared of back in his room. He started tentatively, picking some very benign ones like Winnie the Pooh, his Sleep Sheep, and a cute duck. He stayed in my doorway, and would sneak in quietly and grab them and then run quickly into his room. But then the more he got, the more excited he was. Then he found the Grinch, and said, "Oh, there's the Grinch!" and grabbed him. So I asked, "I thought you were scared of the Grinch?" He answered, "I not scared anymore, Mommy." He ended up grabbing almost all the stuffed animals and putting them back. There's maybe a dozen left in our room, more because I think he got bored of the game than out of fear. But I didn't want to push it, so we'll tackle that another day. That night, as I was telling Marty the story when he got home from work, Oliver piped up, "Oliver not scared, Daddy!" Yay!

And now for regression.
Friday night, Marty and I talked about it and decided we had to just go hard core with the potty training. There was no way we could go back to diapers at this point. So we had to ramp up the training techniques. Perhaps we had gotten too confident in his abilities. We were pretty much letting him decide when he went potty, and that worked for a while, but then he just got lazy about it. So then we had to start reminding him to go, then begging, threatening, and bribing him to go. So he got stubborn and rebellious, thus leading to more accidents. A bad cycle, really.

So our new hard core plan was to go back to the timer, a new incentive toy (a Cars puzzle) so he'd get interested in getting stickers again. And the big change: naked baby! No training pants, nothing. We put towels on the furniture, and a sweatshirt on Oliver so he wouldn't get cold. We weren't planning on going anywhere much this weekend, so we could just focus on this.The idea behind naked baby is that even cotton training pants are somewhat of a comfort and they'll forget it's not a diaper and pee in it. But many kids won't just pee when they're naked, because they are so used to peeing into a pant-like item.

And it worked.

I am thrilled to report that we had an accident free weekend! Not a single drop of pee on the floor or furniture! We used the timer a lot on Saturday, but by the end of the day he was going on his own and even pooped in the potty. We didn't use the timer much today, and during nap time he called for us to help him go potty because he had pooped. Usually he just sleeps in it, so that's a step forward. We went to church this morning, and he kept his pull up dry. So I hope we are back on track, and I can keep my sanity, and he can go to preschool someday.