to be confused with bribery or rewarding, which would look
something like, “I’ll let you watch Elmo if you sit and pee for
Mommy.” Don’t slip into bribery. You will end up with a power
struggle.
It’s also helpful to prompt as part of a cluster of other things.
“Please pick up your blocks. It’s time for lunch. Go sit on the potty,
then we’ll wash hands.” This does two things. First, it puts potty
training in the normal realm of “Things You Just Do.” Second, it
keeps your tone and vibe normal. I know this is shocking, but parents
can get shrill and anxious around potty training. A brilliant mom on
our forum found that talking about using the potty as something
“helpful” worked wonders. Her daughter loves being helpful so she
would phrase it as, “Put your fork on the table. Put your cup on the
table. Go sit and pee. Thank you. You are such a big help.”
The delicate dance of prompting without overprompting is an
important one. It’s also important to remember that this is
temporary! Many parents try to rush the self-initiation and end up
with a lot of accidents. You don’t want to do this. If your child
doesn’t have a lot of success to build on, his little mind will go to
some version of, “I suck at this. I’m not even going to try anymore.”
(I call it the inner “f**k it.”) You are building a tower of success. If
you start kicking out blocks from the foundation, the tower will
tumble.
Overprompting and Backing Off
It usually goes down like this: around the fourth or fifth day into