This past weekend I decided it was time to help my daughter master a skill some men haven’t even mastered yet – going pee pee on the potty.
Although my daughter just turned two, I had full confidence she was ready to take the plunge and ditch the bulky, restricting diaper for a pair of pretty cotton panties.
Well, my confidence was shattered, my patience tested and my floor hasn’t been this clean since the day I moved in to my house.
Potty training was a bust.
I even did my research. talked to my friends and read the books.
How was this such an epic fail?
The ABCs of potty training says; A: assess your child’s readiness for potty training, B: be consistent in your approach to potty training and C: cope calmly with potty-training accidents.
OK, assess your child’s readiness. Well she is two, she sits on her potty all of the time and pretends to go pee and she can tell you when she needs a bum change. One step further, she will bring you a diaper and wipes. Check. I would say she is ready.
Be consistent, I took her out of her diaper, put her into some undies and asked her about a hundred times, “do you have to potty?” Check.
And last but not least, cope calmly. Ha, well I did this through gritted teeth, but trust me, when your child is walking down the hall letting the poop nuggets fall out of their underwear, it takes a lot of restraint not to yell “what the … heck are you doing?” But I did it. I smiled, asked nicely “why did you do that hunny?” Only to be told “I had poopy in my bum mom. Sorry mom, sorry.”
OK, so round one goes to baby, however don’t count this mommy out just yet, I had one little trick up my sleeve.
It was time to bring out the big guns.
Not wanting to veer from the B in the ABCs, I brought out the “princess bottoms.” They are pretty, they are pink, they have a skirt and they are her favourite bathing suit bottoms.
I thought for sure she would want to use the potty over peeing in her pretty princess bottoms – wrong again.
Before we started colouring I asked, “do you need the potty,” and once again I was told “no.” So we proceeded to colour. One picture turned in to two and then I asked again, “hunny, do you need the potty,” only this time the response wasn’t a quick no, but a smile and a giggle and a “I peed mommy. I peed in my princess pants.”
What? No. Why?
So I picked up my little princess only to find, that yep she had peed and yep it was huge and yep round two - goes to baby.
So, what to do now? Bribe her, give her candy, let her watch her favourite show while sitting on the potty.
Well, bribing led to tears, candy led to a doggy bath and the potty in the living room ended with my son soaked in water, wearing the potty on his head.
Needless to say my smile was fading, patience running thin and clean underwear becoming non-existent.
After sticking to the ABCs for all of one day, which felt like a 100 days, I decided it was time to reassess the situation, come up with a new approach and put a diaper back on that bum ASAP.
I know for a fact my daughter knew what she was doing all day. The smiles, giggles, false alarms and false hope were all part of a master plan to let me see what the terrible twos are all about.
Perhaps potty training is over-rated.
We begin our life in diapers, we end our life in diapers, who’s to say we can’t go through the middle in diapers as well.
OK, not going to happen, but this mom is taking a potty training hiatus and when she returns it is all or nothing.
But if it turns out to be nothing once again, dad will be taking the rains and if I have to clean the seat every time someone goes to the pee - all I can say is that it’s better than a diaper.
