Doing Nothing...almost

When I found out a few months ago that I was going to be having 5 days off (our day care provider took a long weekend for her birthday), I decided it would be perfect timing to give potty training another go. "They" say summer is the optimal time for potty training...I'm sure you can guess why, and we had no exciting or out of town plans. This, combined with the fact that he was showing more signs of training readiness; namely hiding from us to produce a #2, then not listening or coming to us when asked to after said production, being more able to dress himself, and more importantly able to undress himself. I was bound and determined to go into it this time with more knowledge and feel more prepared to handle toilet aversion and other potty disasters. I started researching and reading up on the latest and greatest potty training (or to be PC...potty learning) techniques. With each approach I read or heard about, I could find at least 5 reasons why it would NOT work for us. Having attempted this feat once before, I sort of knew what I was up against in terms of cooperation from the little guy. The more I researched, the more I learned how NOT easy it was going to be to potty train a brilliant, stubborn, head strong child. With D-day (or P-day, if you must) growing closer, I splurged on a book, which has given me to most insight into the process. After reading through the pros and cons of the different approaches outlined in the book, I decided to go with the one that I thought would work best for us. The "Do Nothing" approach. Basically, you just let the kid figure it out for himself, on his time, when he's ready. The runner up was the "Have someone else do it" approach (self explanatory).

So now, I've got this time off work in which I would LOVE to train K to use the toilet, but how can I accomplish this in 5 days by doing nothing?? I couldn't exactly just do nothing, but I tried to do very little. If you're interested, here is what I did do:

--A few days of prep work in which we spent long periods of time outside, nakey from the waist down and downing tons of fluids (who knew he'd LOVE grape gatorade?), and talking about what is going on when things start flowing.

--When he "goes", mention how it felt just before and how he should listen to his body when it says it's time to go potty. Only mention, not repeated a million times and tattooed across his forehead.

--Try not to ask him every 10 minutes if he has to "go". This is probably the hardest of all. My tongue is scarred from biting it all weekend, but I think this might have been the best piece of advice gained from reading an entire book about potty training.

--Wait patiently for him say those sweet little words, "I have to go potty".

--Make a potty sticker incentive chart for success in the toilet. (My outdoor prep work got me closer to housebreaking than potty training and K told me that going on the toilet was "not fun", so I had to up the ante for going in the toilet.)

--Stock up on cleaning supplies and laundry detergent...

Now, we're at the end of our 5 day weekend, and I think things are going in the right direction. He's definitely putting it all together, we've only been having about one flooding accident per day. He really has a stronger bladder than I would have ever imagined; yesterday he held it for almost 3.5 hours...before making his deposit in the proper location.