I love Holden’s preschool and have to credit them with getting him pretty well potty-trained and conversant in choices and consequences. When the kids are in the 2-3 year old group, at a certain point, they are given the choice of underwear or diaper. Many — like Holden — will change their minds according to their moods and whims.
A side note: at home, he never ever chose underwear. I suspect that he wanted to be fully master of his domain before risking it. I don’t know why, but that’s how it went.
So, right after his third birthday, when his school went on a one-week recess, Holden announced that he was done with diapers. Hooray. He pretty much had the whole thing mastered and we had very few (daytime) accidents. Cool.
For the next few nights, we noticed that he would still use his nighttime diaper if it was on. So, that’s when I made my fatal mistake: I asked him, “Holden would you like to sleep in diapers or underwear?”
I had wrongfully assumed that he would continue to choose diapers at night until he had the whole deal well mastered. Nope. He chose underwear. And that means that we change the sheets and his clothes at least every other night.
Operation Diapers at Night has been in progress for about two months now. When he has a dry night, we reward him with a glow in the dark sticker for his ceiling (he has about 20). When he has an accident, we try not to pressure or shame him by saying nice things like, “it’s ok, we’ll just clean you up” or “put the rest of your pee in the potty and we’ll get you into a nice warm bed.”
It feels like the last week we’ve had more wet nights than dry nights. Furthermore, he cries and fusses more each night (like he’s trying to wake Milo and piss us off)… is it a really bad idea to move to pull-ups at night?
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