Truce!

It’s been a long four months in the battle that is potty training and I am temporarily conceding. My son has worn me down, and I just give up for the moment.

We started the battle by waiting until our son was over two and half, he had all the verbal ques, and he would tell if he had gone to the bathroom in his pants. We didn’t push, we were patient. We did not underestimate our opponent, “the pooper”; we knew that we needed a lot of preparation for a big change like this. We read books and we explained what was happening when Mommy and Daddy had to go to the bathroom. He even followed us into the bathroom for demonstrations. We talked about being a big boy and how cool it would be to wear Lightening McQueen and Elmo on his butt. This was before we even made him sit on the toilet. We got a special toilet, which has too small because our kid is really tall for his age, so we got him a special toilet seat, which he was too big for as well. Sorry kid, you are going to have to learn to hold yourself over the pot, which he did.

Once our daycare lady determined it was time, we didn’t take this battle lightly; he went straight into underwear so that there would be no confusion with the pull-ups. We put him on the toilet in regular intervals hoping that he would catch on and tell us when he had to go. The first couple of weeks went ok, and he was sort of catching on. We cheered when he went on the toilet. However, we have now gotten to the point now where we have one accident a day, and he does not initiate taking himself to the potty if we do not take him. My daycare lady who has potty trained hundreds of kids said, “Well, when they are truly ready, it only takes three days” and that was when we were three months in.

We thought we would try some harsher battle tactics; clearly it was time for psychological warfare. We started with peer pressure, “Your buddy at daycare uses the toilet when he has to go”. We would even sneak up on him and wait until he did the potty dance and then we would jump out and say, “Hey, that is the feeling that tells you to go to the bathroom, go, go, go, and get to the toilet”. We tried parental pressure, “Mommy and Daddy love it when you go to the bathroom on the toilet all on your own”. Then we thought Grandparent pressure would surely kick him over, “Grandma and Grandpa are so proud of you when you got to the bathroom on the toilet”. Clearly at this point we are losing the battle, so we tried bribery, “We will take you to Discovery Kingdom to go see Thomas the Tank Engine, if you go to the bathroom like a big boy”. Still nothing works on this kid. Clearly he is highly trained in stubbornness. We had one last thing we tried, personal responsibility. We are on month four and for the last two weeks we have been making him clean up after himself when he has an accident in his pants (with help from us of course). He has to take his clothes off, take them to the washer and he has to clean himself up. We thought that if he had to take care of himself and clean up that he would be inspired to use the bathroom and we would have won the battle, because he has been so close for so long. I have even sunk as low as to say, “your not a big boy because big boys don’t pee or poo in their pants”.

Nothing, it didn’t work. He knows that he is going in his pants and he just doesn’t care. It seems that he is not connecting with the feeling of having to go and getting to the toilet. So we give up for right now. We explained why we are putting him back in diapers and I am just going to give it a rest. My enemy has beaten me by wearing me down.