It Finally Clicked!

I'm not sure how it happened, but it finally did.  Amariah is potty trained!  A few days ago she finally started telling me when she needed to go to the bathroom--before it was too late.

It's been a long road getting to this point.  I first started setting Amariah on the toilet around 1 year of age.  You wouldn't think potty training should span a 1 1/2 year period; apparently, she wasn't ready and I wasn't committed.  (Although, to give myself a bit of a break, part of that time I simply wasn't able to commit--I was pregnant with twins, and then I had twins!) :-)  My lack of commitment led to a lot of inconsistency, and her lack of interest led to a lot of frustration (which led to more inconsistency...).  I tried a wide gamut of approaches: from discipline to reward and from encouragement to threats, nothing I did seemed to work.

A couple months ago I finally started telling people, "She is potty trained (i.e. I have done the training).  Now she just has to decide to do it."  Things weren't looking very promising, and then suddenly... something clicked!  And boy, am I and the budget and the washing machine glad!