Raina gets rewarded

Raina has been pooping in the potty for a while now, but we have to remind her to do it. We have become very attune to the grunting noises that forwarn of a pooping incident. At the first sign of gruntage, we wisk her off to the potty in the interest of not having to clean poopy underwear. And of course we take preventative measures as well, encouraging potty pooping at every opportunity. So when we started hearing grunting today, we initiated our usual panicy response of hunting down Raina. To our surprise though, she was already on the potty - marking the first time that she pooped on the potty without being encouraged to. So whats our secret? Well bribery of course, in this case candy. But Raina isn't so educated in the way of the wonderful things out there that she could hold out for and convince us to give her. So "candy" in our house means - tic-tacs. Thats right, we are spoiling our daughter with a single 2 calorie tic-tac each time she poops in the potty.

I almost feel bad about how easy it is to abuse Raina in a negotiation. It is so easy to take advantage of her general lack of information as the above example illustrates. Plus, it helps that we have everything that she wants and she has practically nothing to bargain with. Kids really only have one major bargaining chip, screaming and crying. Unfortunately for Raina, that stopped being effective on me a year and a half to two years ago. And eventually it stopped working on Krystal too. So she's got nothing, and we have everything - its just not fair.

Raina is playing fully functional hide and seek, complete with counting to ten. She still is a tad questionable with hiding herself, but she is getting better.