I heard music to my ears this morning at the wee hours of 5 a.m.
I heard my three-year-old get out of bed and open his bedroom door and close it. I then heard another door open (the bathroom) and then I heard nothing for about two minutes, and then I heard his bedroom door open again and then close and then I heard him rustling around in his bed again.
Besides the fact that no door that was opening in this scenario was mine, do you know what this means people????
We've turned a corner! There was pottying happening on own initiative, in the dark, and a mommy was not involved in any way shape or form! There I continue to lay, listening to the monitor and then being comforted by the lull of his return to his bed! Now of course, I stayed awake because I couldn't stop thinking about how wonderful and musical and magical this actually is!
And there are countless implications here, too, I mean, this means he is actually not going to walk down the aisle one day in a diaper.
Hurrah!
I've done my job.
I mean we do have the occasional accident still but we really are on our way safely and happily, with, and I won't lie here, a little help from the Tootsie Roll, (yes, that is my secret, I used candy and I don't care, judge away) which many people have wondered out loud if that is a fitting reward for this milestone (and/or coincidental) and not because it is candy. I don't know really why I chose the Tootsie Roll, actually, and yes, I do see how my mind could have subconsciously drawn some parallel and if so, my mind really is kind of weird and warped without telling me. But I have since drawn the conclusion (and you can file this away for your own personal records) that it is not really a spectacular reward only for the time it takes in consuming it, because he sits there and chews and chews and chews for this ridiculous amount of time, and at bedtime this could really get a bit annoying, so I think I'm going to move on to the M&M, something much smaller, and then eventually, nothing, except his own pride.
(The bigger secret here and I'll reveal it to you, where he also began to turn the corner in potty training when, was a couple weeks after an accident in the middle of the night, he said to me point blank, "Clean me." And I responded happily with, "Well actually, honey, you're going to clean yourself today!" And then had him do it all, put the contents of undie in potty, go and get his new undie and then clean up the spill with a towel. It sounds kind of gross, but if he is smart enough to think that mommy is going to do all the cleaning here, he is big enough to start doing it himself. This did not appeal to him. He started going in the potty almost immediately after that. Lesson learned for both of us.)
Well now that this job is done (almost), I have found myself charged with a new task: How to explain to a three-year-old how to not tell lies.
Does this really happen this early? And are they deliberate? I have to read up on this immediately.
Because I have found that our little "reward," (for a candyholic) has become kind of double-edged sword here. He is taking the initiative to potty all by himself. However, I caught him just yesterday telling me he went (and that he flushed!) and afterward making his case for a treat.
The only problem was that I knew he didn't go, and I knew he didn't flush either. I was standing right there (he did not know this.)
Little boogie.
So. I went into my "mom" mode, explaining to him that when we say we did something and we really didn't, that is called a lie. When we say we did something and we really did do that, that's called "the truth." And you need to tell the truth. Because it's not ok to tell lies. And then I started to go into "trust" and the disappointment that comes from not trusting people, but as it was all coming out of my mouth, I was confusing even myself and I'm pretty sure he had already tuned out by the time I even said the word "lie" because his eyes were glazed over (so were mine, who am I kidding) and he was likely already onto the next thing, thinking "CANDYCANDYCANDY IWANT CANDY HOWDOIGETCANDY".
So that was that. I've been testing him a little to find out if he learned anything about the truth, because it is out there, I have retained at least that much from X-Files and I do plan to pass that on to him in some shape or form, I just really don't know how to convey it in a toddler-type language.
The concept of truth isn't really like holding up a card and asking him what color it is. Or is it? Hmm. Any ideas here? Some useful toddler lingo you have used?
Because, I mean, lying is a very slippery slope! Today it's just about whether or not he flushed, but tomorrow, it's about whether or not he took the car out in the middle of the night and robbed a 7/11 for a carton of Marlboro Lights.
Any help saving my son from juvie is appreciated.
Tuesday
Lying 101
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