If you have followed my blog in the past 4 months you would know that we have been working on potty training. I did a 3 day potty training over Christmas break and I would say it went pretty good and for the most part he was potty train when it had to go with going pee. Pooping was a whole different story. We could not find anything that was working and I think he even started to get scared to go on the potty. I was beyond frusterated and it seemed like nothing I said or did worked...
My friend showed me this race car incentive chart thing on pinterest where when they did something they weren't suppsed to they had to take a pit stop and then could enter the race later. I thought about this for a long time, trying to determine how I could make something like it for AJ. While, his love for hockey started and this is all we talked about, played, watched etc. He even played hockey with peas and carrots. I decided to make my own incentive chart based around hockey. It had a place with velco on the ice and one in the penalty box. Then it had a score board with 10 pucks that he could color in every time he "scored a goal" (go poopy on the potty) And yes we do refer to it as scoring a goal and making shots on goal. :) What ever works right?! When ever he has an accident then he has to move the hockey player to the penalty box. When you are in the penalty box you can't play hockey so this means anything hockey goes up... Wow did that work! And when he colored in all 10 pucks he got a brand new hockey set!! He was so excited about the hockey set! When ever anyone came over we would have to get out the box and show them! I will say 10 goals was a lot and a big goal to reach and everytime we colored on in we did have a little melt down because we had not reached our goal yet... BUT then we DID!!! Wow that was a GREAT day!!! AND we were done having accidents almost completely! We took our hockey sticks everywhere with us! And he knew if he had an accident they would go away... So for 2 weeks we were almost completely accident free! It was amazing!!! Then we went to Des Moines over night and the bathroom was always too far away and that really messed us up...shoot! So we are back to the chart. I really wanted to make sure I was not buying him something every time and making sure I wasn't bribing him but really talking about setting a goal and how we are going to make good choices to reach that goal. After being a teacher I have seen far too often children that won't do anything unless they get something in return. So I want to be intentional about how we afirm our children and give rewards. I dont' want it to be for everything...
So, AJ and I talked yesterday about how we really need to work on going potty in the potty everyday! And how we can't keep having accidents. Then we talked about how that is our goal so we are going to start using our hockey chart again. I asked him what he thought would be a fun thing to do when we reached our 10 hockey pucks. He has loved watching soccer games and seeing the girls practice when we drive on University. So I asked him if he wanted to go to a real soccer field and play a family soccer game when he reached his goal. He got very excited and with in minutes pooped on the potty! Then again in the morning! 
AJ has always been a determined little boy! I remember saying that when he was learning how to stand and now again with potty training. It is a great strength to have and I love that I have figured that out about his personality. Setting goals is a great skill to learn and I am so excited that we are having these converstations already at 2 1/2! I can't wait to see how these goals change through the years!!!
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