Jess

When I’m nursing my 3-month-old and simultaneously vrooming cars and trucks on the floor with the 3-year-old. It’s not always a success, but when the moods and focus align, I feel triumphant.

Prunes and also dried mango work for us to avoid constipation

Pee – Sticker charts and small toys as rewards!! Toy after first sticker then after 2 more then 3, etc. For poop we had to be more drastic. We had him poop in the bathroom for awhile, and he would gather his toys and bring them in – so he had minutes to prepare and full control. If we talked him into sitting on the toilet he would hold it in. (Fortunately he would still get it out into a pullup later so he wasnt constipated. We talked about this a lot with him.) we talked to him for weeks about the possibility of trying “poop medicine” (a suppository) and how it would go in his butt and would help him poop on the potty. Also got the book “princess of poopville”. Finally one day his poop “dripped out” (his words!) on the way from the bathroom to the changing table, and I’d had enough! We did the poop medicine the next day, with his consent and understanding that we would use it one time to help him get started and then he wouldn’t need it after that. We did have to hold him screaming and crying on the toilet after that for an entire hour until he let out the poop, which was absolutey awful. Movies and books for entertainment didn’t prevent that. But he finally pooped on the toilet, with dad hugging him, and we made a huge deal about it, and he got the new toy that had been the bribe for weeks sitting on a high shelf. We started a sticker chart and at the end of the day he had pooped on the toilet about 8 times (due to poop medicine lingering effects!), and got another small toy. I also sent him letters in envelopes from the princess of poopville thanking him for his poop. Did that daily for about a week until a final letter. If you do this – which I could find no recommendation for anywhere on the internet – don’t go anywhere that day!! We didnt realize it would last so long and had a poopy pants disaster at Kids Empire. I also recommend talking about all the things you’d like to do but can’t because she’s not using the toilet. Not necessarily jsut to her – “gossip” to your partner or stuffed animals “oh I’m so sad that Abby isn’t peeing on the potty. I really wanted to take her to ___ today, but we can’t go there if she’ll pee on the floor. That’s so sad!” He was pee trained at 2.5 and poop trained just before 3. Good luck!!!!

My view is that those milestone ages are an average. My niece was “behind” with talking, but she of course now, at 7, talks just fine and did not need any interventions. She was also reading chapter books by age 6, so it has nothing to do with intelligence! On the other hand, my colleague’s daughter wasn’t rolling, crawling, etc well past when she should have been, and it turned out the poor girl had extra fluid in her ears and couldn’t balance. They got tubes and PT and she was running in fewer than 6 months after that, possibly sooner – I can’t remember. So they need to mark the milestones so that they can catch something like that where there is an obstacle and the kid needs help getting past it, but there’s also just a huge variation of when kids do things on their own timelines. Also, the word may not need to sound like banana. If your kid says “buh” consistently for banana, that counts as a word even if it doesn’t sound like banana to us. That’s what our pediatrician told us. I agree with your friends that it is much too soon to worry about it! Maybe try a new pediatrician?

We go outside whenever it’s not raining. It’s nice for me, too, since then sometimes I can socialize with other parents at the playground or people walking their dogs past our house…and I definitely need that adult social interaction. For rainy days, I keep a closet of toys that people have passed down to us or gifted through us (so he doesn’t know about them), or garage sale toys, and I give those as a “rainy day toy” since no toy is more occupying than a new one. (That closet is also for sticker chart rewards, which we depend on since he is still very uncivilized.) We also do “quiet time” after lunch since no more nap, which gives us all a break. We put on audiobooks for him to listen to while he plays by himself in his room. I start it by playing with him there for a couple of minutes, say I’ll be back in 20 after I do x y and z, and then I play with him again for 2 minutes and then leave again to do x y and z. The only downside to that is his new game recently where he “goes to the beach,” in which he takes every single toy out of his closet and puts it all in a pile on his floor. Keeps him occupied but takes forever to get him to clean up later!