Go Potty

Yes he did - a #1 - for the first time today! We just bought him his own potty seat yesterday with the idea that we would start the process of potty training now.

Matthew has been mimicking a lot of our actions to a tee in the past couple of weeks, even more so than in the past. If I yawned, he'd pretend to yawn. If Bill coughed, he'd let out a fake cough. When I tickle Elizabeth's tummy, he does the same without any prompting from me.

We decided to take advantage of this. With no big brother or big sister to imitate, we're it.

We did it with tooth brushing to get him to brush a little better and it worked like a charm. We brushed our teeth with him to show him how we brushed and he imitated us and even let us help him with brushing his back teeth, which he never used to let us do.

When I showed him his potty seat yesterday, he was immediately interested in sitting in it especially when out of imitation. I didn't take his shorts or diaper off though. I just wanted him to get used to sitting on it first.

Bill gave him a bath tonight and in an attempt to add potty time to his night time routine, he put Matthew on his potty seat right after the bath and said, "You're on the potty. Go potty in the potty." And Matthew went, much to Bill's surprise. I had to look right after Bill told me about it because I didn't believe it myself. We celebrated his first potty experience with high 5's and lots of praise and big smiles.

We don't know if tonight was a matter of good timing or luck or if he's actually beginning to understand this concept with all the imitating he's been doing. Whatever it is, we're very happy about this newest 1st. Maybe he's ready to learn. It'll be a process. We don't know how long it will take and we have no timeframe expectations.

According to "An overview of the development of infants with Down syndrome (0-5 years)", 4 to 5 years is the average age that a child with Down syndrome will use the potty without help. Matthew will be ready when he's ready, with us helping him along.

We'll continue to sit him on the potty and make it a night-time routine and eventually add potty time into the morning routine too. Making it part of the daily routine is an idea I got from Rochelle at The Life & Times of Aidan & Alayna. Before parenthood, we would have never thought we'd be happy about potty time.