Bringing Awareness is not the only Challenge in this House! ;-)
Everyone has their Kryptonite…some of us more than
others. Some of us have an alphabet list
of them and just keep track of them that way, makes the paperwork easier. I could start at A with my list, but I’ve
decided to skip ahead and jump to P.
Quite a jump I know, and to avoid any spoilers, anyone contemplating
having children, you might want to bow out of here now, this will not be
pretty.
Forewarned? Good...onward
then friends. You see, I have never been
a super star mom that had my kids potty-trained after their first step. I used to avoid discussions of success
because it was just ridiculous to try to compete with other moms because quite
early on I learned a few things about my children and myself along the
way. Research told me, no one is potty training
successfully until everything is properly developed. My girls are late bloomers! Trust me on this, I didn’t realize it then,
but now I see it very clearly.
All that well intentioned advice would not work, ever, in
any way, shape or form. In fact, the
more pieces of advice we tried, the more stickers and coins and candy… the more
resistance. Who refuses candy as a
child? A pint size Dictator that’s
who.
Cute little panties to encourage her to give up
diapers? Wait, laughing until tears here
on this one… My daughter had a drawer dedicated to her Princess Panties. There was ceremony, there was Pomp and
Circumstance…there was pee down the Princess and Poop down the leg, and that
stupid Princess kept right on laughing at me…like nice job Mom, I am dirty
now. Yeah, well shut up your Highness, I
have you in six poses and five colors in quantities of five….I can lose you in
the trash just as easily as rinse and wash you!
My daughter outgrew more panties that she never wore than she did that
she could wear. But her Grandmas were
quite sweet and kept the parade of Princess panties flowing into our house with
Birthday and Christmas frequency. It was
like she knew which box was the panties, and as much as she would ignore and
discard those annoying panty things would be completely reversed later when she
got older and felt she needed bras at a tender age of – well, younger than she
needed them and the Grandmas provided those too. Her Dad and I felt that there should be
something to train before we worried about training… but what the Heck, her
emotional stability was more important than her rate of development in certain
areas…but there I go…completely off the track now.
And just when I thought she had it… Yeah, we brought a new
baby home and it’s almost like there was a memory wipe on how to use the potty
at all. In fact, she was acting like she
had never even seen a potty before in her life.
As a sleep deprived new mom having spent eight days in labor off and on…yeah,
whatever, the pint size dictator in our house won again. All the Princess Panties went into the bottom
drawer and were out of sight for months.
Until one day, almost nine months later I pulled something out of the
bottom drawer of her chest, she noticed the Princess Panties and said she wanted
those. I said to her, you have to pee
and poop in your potty and you can have them all the time. And that was it, she went like she was doing
it for years! I’d have pulled my hair
out if I hadn’t been so excited. One
down, one to go! Holy Crap! Easiest
thing I ever did. Good Grief!! Massive, and quite painful eye roll!
Everything that didn’t work for the first one, didn’t work
with the second one. And everything that
did work for the first, didn’t work for the second one. I was tempted to send the second one to potty
camp but couldn’t find any such beast to send her too. Since heavy drinking was out because I really
don’t like alcohol…we kept pushing on. And we HAD it, we were on the cusp but just couldn’t get there. Frustration set in! I actually yelled at her for a mess, and I
stopped in the middle as I caught myself.
What the Hell was wrong with me?
Yelling at my daughter because she wouldn’t poop in a potty? Good God!
I cleaned her up, hugged her tight, told I was sorry, asked her to
forgive me, then I told her that I loved her and told her to go play. From that moment on, I told her Dad, if she
makes a mistake, clean her up and send her on her way, don’t say anything. She had two more accidents, and then two days
later it never happened again. Using the
potty was within her control, use it or not – she had to decide, I couldn’t
make her do it, she had to decide to do it.
Turns out she is still quite willful and stubborn…who knew!? The red in her hair gave us all the warning
we’d ever need, trust me!
So here I am. Somehow
I have successfully potty trained two children…surely a third cannot be that
hard right? Hahahaha… sometimes I am so naïve
it is quite painful!
Bradley is his own little personality. He’s developing a little later than the
girls, and he’s still not potty trained.
I have tried all the tricks that did and did not work with the girls…yeah,
nothing. I get little glimmers of hope
once in a while. Sometimes he will sit on
his potty and we have success…and then sometimes, he likes to mess with
me. And it’s never easy you see, his
gastro tract is so compromised he has to have daily Miralax to help him go, without
it, he doesn’t go. With it, well..let’s
just say that there are some days that there is no stopping the go.
Two weeks ago, he showed me promising potty habits, we were
on the changing table and I asked and he seemed excited so we ran to the potty
and success! Potty dance for all of
us! He washed his hands and off we
went. So I thought – let’s try all big
boy pants on Saturday, see how we do! Oh
My God!!!
We started out awesome!
He peed, we washed our hands, thirty minutes later he peed and pooped
and washed our hands! Woohoo! We were well on our way! AND then…then the wheels fell off the
wagon!
Turns out we were having one of THOSE Miralax days… there
was to be a lot of going! A LOT, like epic
proportions! Too bad this didn’t happen
right away. I mean at first I didn’t
know, and he was doing well with our old Pediatrician’s method of keep the
potty in the room where he is – so I had it on a towel to protect the carpet,
and he had easy access while he was confined to the area watching a favorite movie. Hmmmm…
So about the time I learned that this was going to be a lot of going
potty day, he started in his pants, while on my lap, and while I got him to the
potty and he finished there… the result was on my pants and in his big boy
pants. Argh!!!!!!!! I have poop on
me!! But wait, there’s more!
I grab the dog and put her in my room cause hers is not the
help I need or want (and dogs are just gross sometimes), I come back and he’s
ready to get up so I clean him up.
Thinking I have a minute (and man, I have to stop thinking!) I turn to his
potty to pick up the little bowl to take to rinse out and maybe grab new pants for
me on my way back…and I hear that grunt, you know that little grunt noise that
lets you know it’s coming. But there was
no grunt and then ease to the potty.
NOOO!!! It was more of a grunt of “INCOMING!!!!!” and
plop! Sometimes the world slows, like
literally…like your brain can’t quite fathom the horror before you and it spins
out ever so slowly so you can catch up… yeah, like that! I stared at him in utter horror and
fascination, then at the chaos he had wreaked in less than thirty seconds. In that moment, I bowed to the Universe, took
the King of Poop back to his bedroom and back into a diaper. Then I spent the next thirty minutes
cleaning, bleaching and fumigating my house.
I might have used too much baking soda as parts of my carpet are
slightly white… I used the bleach on the potty and my pants, not the carpet…I
still had a few brain cells working.
So the current pint size dictator in our house continues to
wear diapers and might until he reaches puberty…or at least the week long
Thanksgiving break coming up. I believe
that I will have forgotten this debacle of potty training attempt and be
willing to give it another go. But that
is not a given…I just might be feeling the pressure of having a son who is
almost seven and still no closer to potty trained than he was yesterday. I know his Gastro issues are quite a
challenge, but I do believe that someday we will get there…I just am not
placing bets in Vegas for this year.
The best part: His
Dad walks in the door and goes: “Smells like poop. And what possessed you to give this a go
today?” He’s still walking around don’t
worry, but I kind of wanted to punch him, instead he gave me a big hug and
promised that someday we’ll get there.
Good man that Daddy guy!
Not for the Faint of heart this potty training thing! Raising awareness one soiled diaper at a time…just
kidding. Bradley will take longer to get
there, but he will. He’ll learn all he
needs to learn and he will do it in his own time. Sometimes you just have to embrace patience
and faith…and bleach wipes…bleach wipes are truly your friend!
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