Potty Training and Pomegranates

My wife and I have started potty traning with our little girl.  She has been showing quite a few signs of readiness and after consulting some of our parenting mentors and reading a great book by our friends, we decided to go for it this weekend.

My first day san diapers (well actually Isabelle’s first day I have been out of diapers for a few years) was yesterday.

So equiped with lots of princess, mini-mouse and Hello Kitty big girl under-wear we jumped into the world of potty training.  It was also the big push day for my first book, so I was thinking a lot about all of the hard work my wife does everyday to train Isabelle in the way she should go as an act of worship.

You see, this post and potty training for that matter is not about yesterday near as much as all the hard work that my wife has done in advance.  In fact it’s her preliminaries that are making this a pretty smooth event. 

As far as the potty training we are on day two with -0- accidents as of this post a 2:00pm!

As far as the pomegranates we are still #1 in “Faith”, #4 in “Christian Living”, #15 in “Christianity” ,#32 in “Spirituality” and #409 in “all books”

Here are the pomegranates that I see Connie carving thanks to to the help of our great parenting classes at Seacoast:

1.  She plans training opportunities everyday.  Connie does not just hope that she get’s the opportunity to teach Isabelle self-control, but rather has structured time planned everyday (the plan is on our fridge) that is intentional in teaching and training self-control. 

I wonder as a leader if I do this for my team?

2. She inspects what she expects.  As a part of the self-control and first-time obedience that we expect as a family Connie looks for oportunites and even plans opportunities to see if our inspection turns up our expectations.  For example, one thing we expect when we call Isabelle verbally is that she will say, “Yes Mommy (or Daddy), coming.” and come to us immediatley.  This is something she does 70% of the time if she is not engaged in something.  However, our expectation is that she should be able to respond correctly (or at least 70% of the time) even is she is engaged in a task or playing.  So we inspect this by looking for times when she is in a good mood and a time of non-conflict and “testing” her.  There is an above avaerage chance we will get obedience and met expecatation during this time and then we have a “party of praise”!

I wonder how often I am guilty of inspecting my teams work only when I know that the expectation will not be met?  Am I managing to conflict rather than looking to catch my team doing good?”

Because of these two principle being taught in Isabelle’s life not only will potty training be easier, but I think that life will be better.

I think the next time I release a book I need to also Potty train on the same day