This post will have nothing to do with knitting. If you're here for knitting and don't want to hear about potty training then move on by.

We started potty training Liam yesterday. In case you're new here, he has Down syndrome. He's 6 1/2 years old. We have not tried to potty train him at all prior to yesterday. Our approach with Liam has been to tackle one big thing at a time. For a long time, that was learning to walk. He walked at 3. The next big thing was learning to feed himself. That took a while too. Just within the past year is he feeding himself at all meals and is not choking on a regular basis. He wouldn't chew his food or would stuff food in his mouth and that would cause him to choke. Potty training was not something we felt was urgent, even though he was four, then five, then six. The school didn't much care that he wasn't potty trained either. He has an aide, and she dealt with it when needed which wasn't all that often.

The goal yesterday was to see if Liam recognized when he was peeing. We knew he recognized when he had a bowel movement but no idea if he knew when he peed. I started giving him water to drink yesterday morning and let him go around with no pants. He had a small accident and recognized right away what was going on. He stopped himself, told me he had an accident, then when I put him on the potty, he peed. Woot! He had several accidents on the first day, mainly because he was so full of water, he just couldn't keep it in. Overall, the day was a smashing success.

Today we're on a normal eating and drinking schedule so I can get an idea of his regular schedule. We set a timer to go to the potty about every 20 minutes. He's been 100% accident free so far today. He's very excited to use the potty and is so proud of himself. He's highly motivated by praise so he gets a lot of cheering and clapping and high fives. He's also getting M&M's every time he goes.

I know we are far from him being 100% trained, but we're so very encouraged. Even if he's just time trained and goes every hour or so, we're fine with that. He'll get there.