Potty Party

Our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter may not like toilet-training, but she sure likes the incentives.
At least until the novelty wears off.
And she finds the incentives are getting a little more tightened with her progress.
One of the more recent phrases to enter her vocabulary is "Splash Lagoon".
For those of you who aren't local, "Splash Lagoon" is an indoor water park in Erie, Pennsylvania.  My wife and I regularly travel to Erie during the warmer weather months to bicycle the trail on Presque Isle and find some time to do a little wine-touring as well.
We had known about Splash Lagoon for some time, but hadn't made the time to go there.  Then my brother-in-law surprised us this past Christmas with passes.  We made the trip in January.
Savannah had never been to a waterpark of any kind prior to Splash Lagoon.  Once she experienced it, she thought she had died and gone to heaven.
And once the experience was over, she said she wanted to go back...frequently.
Perfect time to incentivize her toilet-training.
Especially since we have to read facial gestures of hers to know when she needs to go, is going or gives us the less-than-desired response when prompted:
"No, I just went."
And not in the bathroom either.
An idea had formed by my resourceful wife...offer Savannah the opportunity to earn her way back to Splash Lagoon.
Margie created a sign on red posterboard, with pictures of Savannah in various stages of play at Splash Lagoon.  We also got some smiley-face stickers and black sticker letters.
For every time she successfully goes to the bathroom, she earns a smiley-face sticker.  When she receives five, then she earns a letter, with the goal of spelling out SPLASH LAGOON.  As she progresses, she'll need more stickers to earn another letter, in order to encourage her to keep going.
Literally and figuratively, that is.
We're at S-P-L-A now.
And I also want to point out that Splash Lagoon is an incentive separated from other disciplinary means.
We don't threaten to take away letters or stickers for bad behavior...that would be counter-productive. 
We come up with other ideas for that. 
Fortunately, we haven't had to spend much time doing so.


NEXT WEEK:  Tub Time