The Potty Not Traveled

A walks into my room carrying a pair of Elmo underwear and holds them up proudly. "Elmo panties, Mommy."

"You can't wear your Elmo panties until you start using the big girl potty."

She turns, exits, and returns moments later carrying a pair of Dora panties. "Dora, Mommy?"

In my mind, I roll my eyes and laugh at her budding reasoning ability and intellect. "All right, smart girl," I say. "You can't wear ANY panties until you use the potty. Panties are for big girls who use the potty every time."

"I want to wear my Dora panties!" she screams, voice escalating with each word.

"Well, let's go potty," I say. I take her hand and walk her to the bathroom. She sits, fully clothed, on the toilet and looks up to make sure Mommy is watching. "We need to take off your diaper first."

"No! I don't want to potty."

"Okay, but you can't wear the panties." I walk downstairs and leave my two-and-one-half-year-old writhing and whining on the bathroom floor. Moments later she comes downstairs wearing her Dora panties over her diaper. I just shrug my shoulders in defeat and start to make dinner.

So goes potty training at our house. As a former teacher, I could bring thirty seventh graders to complete silence by just raising my eyebrow. Students who'd narry written their names without whining were creating essays full of plot twists and conversational nuances. Kids who'd complained about reading the homework assignment off the board suddenly begged to go to the library for one more book. Certainly, all the result of God's gift of teaching. Somehow, though, that ability has not yet translated home to a feisty toddler, a potty, and big girl pants.

Defeated and frustrated, I've almost abandoned the idea of potty training A completely. Okay, I don't want a kindergartner with diapers, so I'm sure I'll pick it up again sometime. With the baby coming, I'm now beginning to worry about potty regression if I ever do manage to encourage her to use the toilet again. Have I mentioned that she still uses her pacifer? Yup, we've not begun to scale that mountain.

Yet, A does know and recognize all her letters. She can count to twelve. Must be something about eggs and doughnuts. She is a voracious scanner of books, who simply loves to learn. And, after thinking about my teaching years, I've come to realize that those students didn't turn into readers and writers overnight. It took months, sometimes the entire year, of patience, prayer, and dedication on my part and dedication, motivation, and learning on their part. Perhaps, I'm trying too hard too fast with A.

She does understand that Mommy's belly does indeed contain some sort of weird, moving item that is already taking up some of HER space on mom's lap and will soon completely disrupt life as she knows it. Her safe, solo world will soon be shared with something unknown that cries and nurses and takes her mommy's attention away for several hours a day. Perhaps not using the potty is her last vestige of control in a world that suddenly seems much less certain. If I take the time to get behind her eyes, I suddenly see how frightening this big girl stuff can seem when it all happens so quickly. So, instead of immediately feeling like I have the word FAILURE tattooed on my face when someone asks if my child is potty trained, I think I'll remove the focus from my own feelings of inadequacy as a parent and instead shift my concentration to A's perspective. Maybe this potty training process will go much more smoothly once I do.