It's My Potty And I'll Cry If I Want To!

Potty training has hit yet another setback.
We started out rewarding her just for sitting on the potty. I had a jar of super-cheap toys and trinkets (plastic animals, clearance jewelry, etc) that I wrapped individually, so she could open each one. She started taking that for granted, and would just rifle though the jar, opening and discarding items, never satisfied. But it got her comfortable with the potty. Then we switched to only rewarding results, rather than attempts. For a potty success, she would earn a much awesomer toy, like something from the Dollar store, until she got bored with those, and then we upgraded to Littlest Pet Shop pets. They're spendier, at around $2.50 each, but she loves them and wants to earn them, so we were seeing many more potty successes, and even a few times she told us when she needed to go. And for poo, we got big presents. Playsets. Like a Little Pet Shop House, or a Strawberry Shortcake with a bajillion little bits to play with. That kind of thing. I had just switched to a star chart (5 pees or  poo = a present,) since she was doing so well, she was getting several potty presents a day, so I wanted to teach her to wait and the value of slowly earning a goal. But that was when the potty use dropped to nil.

Lately, she's running away when it's time to change her diaper (I know, I know. Most kids do that. She's always been fairly cooperative though.) And refusing to even sit on the potty. When I asked her why she didn't want to sit on the potty anymore, she said, "Because Mommy and Daddy said I don't have to sit on the potty." Hrm. True. We've been fairly casual and non-stressy about the whole thing, and we've let her know it's her choice whether she wants to use the potty... but maybe it's time to ramp it up a bit! She's certainly physically capable of using the potty! Early on she'd 'hold it in' until she got off the potty and got her diaper on. Stinker. She has a hard time pulling down her pants and pull-ups, so I've switched to undies-only at home, since she can pull those down by herself. She still needs help pulling everything back on, especially as she hates having her stuff pooled at her ankles, so she kicks it all off.
But just undies isn't enough. She's perfectly happy peeing all over herself (and the chairs. And the floor. etc) all day long. So she wears her panties and I have to nag remind her, and then cajole and/or bribe her to sit on the potty at regular intervals. I've cut off all sweets, and now she only gets a treat while sitting on the potty (or after, if that's her choice.) Sometimes she wants to hold some fragile little knickknack of mine, so I let her, but only while she's on the potty. That was a fairly good incentive when we first put the Christmas tree up, and she wanted to hold my fragile ornaments.
Letting her hold my breakables serves several purposes, in addition to incentivizing her potty use. I teach her to be gentle and respectful of fragile things. I teach her that I trust that she can be gentle with fragile things. And I teach her that if she asks, she can hold them, under certain conditions, so she doesn't try sneaking them on her own or climbing up in some precarious way to get at them. She trusts me too, and so knows she can come to me and I'll help her. And unless you plan on packing away everything you value, it's best to teach them how to handle stuff properly, and how to best respect your things, rather than yell at them after they've knocked down the curio cabinet trying to climb up it to play with something on the top!

My plan now is to keep panties on, and put diapers on over for when we have to go out, since I don't relish washing the car seat cover every day, nor am I looking forward to my sister giving me the stinkeye over mystery puddles on her couch! That way she feels the wetness and discomfort, but I have the diaper to catch the mess.
I'm also switching to a more hard-line approach that we've used before. No more "do you need to use the potty?" Now its "Okay! Potty time! What show do you want to watch on the potty?" [We have training potties in the computer and TV rooms, since she doesn't usually like to use the "big potty" seat adapter in the bathroom.] Sometimes she'll ask to hold the potty present she's chosen. [It's cheaper to buy the Littlest Pet Shops in multi-packs, and they had super sales on them around Christmas, so we stocked up! So she sees a whole bunch at once, and decides which one she wants now, and keeps in mind which one she'll want next!] If I think she'll probably have a potty success and earn her toy, I let her hold it. If I'm fairly sure nothing's gonna happen, I let her chose a small candy or fruit snacks. That way I don't have to wrench the toy away from her after!
She's still nowhere near pooping on the potty consistently. For a while, she'd go days with a dry diaper, but that was summer, and it was hot, and I'm fairly sure the dehydration factor plus the potty use was what kept her dry. But we still had a lot more potty use then! But only a few poops, and all but one of them was me catching her at the beginning of a poop and making her sit on the potty to finish. For the other one, she was sitting on the potty watching her shows and didn't want to get off, and happened to poo when she wasn't paying attention!

Hopefully we'll be able to get back on track, get back to the potty chart, then increase the number of stars required, then not need it at all. But so far, for her, having her older cousins and next-door-neighbor friend use the potty isn't an incentive. Telling her about the gym and ballet classes she can't go to until she's potty trained haven't been an incentive. Not even letting her pick out fancy panties has motivated her. [In fact, she outright refused to choose panties all but one of the times I took her. But she's starting to get into them now. She's loving the Lady and the Tramp ones my sister got her for Christmas, and the fairy princess ones I found on clearance from Carter's.] So far the best I can do is just get her to sit on the potty by threatening to give her potty present to her cousin or the girl next door because they use the potty.

As it stands, the only time she voluntarily asks for the potty is either a) out in public near scuzzy bathrooms where I don't even want to touch the door, much less lean on the floor to hold her on the seat. Or b) between 1 and 6am. My husband was disgusted at me the first time she pulled this little stunt at 3am, and I told her to just pee in her diaper and go back to sleep. Now she'll wake me up with "I needa yousa podty an I don' wan the pee to go in my dyper!" Smartass. On the plus side, she's never woken me up for a false alarm! On the minus side, sometimes it means she's up for good! (Until 10am, when we're headed off to whatever activity had been planned for that day, and she falls asleep!)