It's My Potty and I'll Cry if I Want To

A little social potty time (March, 2013)

I'm pretty sure that my two reactions to Ella's accidents last Sunday won't make it into any parenting magazines or potty-training books as effective and the right way to approach them.  If anything, my reactions would probably be good examples of what not to do.

Patience, encouragement and over-the-top praise aren't working on our semi-potty-trained girl.  Sunday, I decided to take a different approach, as if there was really a conscious decision to do so.  Really, I fell into a couple of rants using words she surely doesn't yet understand pretty much with the goal to make her feel bad.  And looking back, unlike most moments when I lose my cool, I really don't feel bad about it.  Call me small, I don't care.

I've gotten yelled at for trying to help her get her pants down or sharply told to "go away" after plopping her on the toilet too many times to feel bad about yelling back.  I've lost too many battles getting her to just try to go potty after a long (dry) nap only to have to clean up a puddle on the carpet shortly after to feel bad about making her feel bad.  We are more than accommodating of her potty whimsy with 4 regular toilets, 2 potty chairs and 3 adaptor seats to better fit little buns on big toilets. I've praised her excessively and rewarded her with stickers of her choice for successful potty visits.

Even a successful day of using the potty is a test of patience, particularly with a head-strong, independent, "do-it-self" kid.  Whether initiated by me because it's just time or by her own realization that she has to pee or poop, she doesn't act with the same urgency I do to get her little buns on the toilet in prime position -- while I'm predicting an accident will occur in 7 seconds, she's thinking about what book she wants to read on the potty or insisting that baby sit on the potty first.  And heaven forbid I offer to help her get her pants down.  If I do manage to pull them down for her, she's oftentimes pulling them back up so she can pull them down herself, mad at me as she does so.

Why it was Sunday's two "accidents" that generated a less-than-patient reaction out of me and not Saturday's "accident" on the carpet or the previous week's 4-accident Sunday, I don't know.  I just snapped.

Sunday, after retrieving Ella from her nap, I strongly suggested she use the potty.  "Let's go potty," I said a few times.  "NOOOO! Don't want go potty!" she exclaimed with each apparently awful suggestion.  Yeah, right, I thought.  Despite her insistence she didn't need to go, I managed to get her to the toilet, her pants down and her buns on the potty.  I even put her baby on the portable potty on the floor thinking she might be feeling a little social.  "You can show Baby how to go potty like a big girl," I told her.  She didn't bite.  "Mommy has to go potty, too -- you go potty first, and then Mommy will go potty," I tried with no success.  We continued our struggle until I had nothing left.  She beat me.  I then I foolishly swapped her nap Pull-Up for a pair of undies.

The next thing I knew, she was peeing on the kitchen floor, fully aware of what was going on but yet not bothered by it.  I, on the other hand, was bothered.  So I laid into her about it.  I felt justified -- afterall, not 5 minutes before then I had strongly suggested she use the potty.  I used phrases like "trying to make you successful" and "appreciate a little cooperation," as if she really knows what either of those mean.  And I yelled as I aggressively pulled her wet pants off, lifted her out of her puddle of pee and cleaned her and her mess up.  She cried, and I didn't care.  And then I spent the next five minutes dramatically darting from laundry room to bathroom to kitchen no longer yelling but still cleaning up, upset and ignoring my shadow that was Ella.  Eventually, like a 2-year-old myself, I threw a pair of undies at her to just put on herself.

Later on, as I prepared dinner (admittedly, I was heating up leftovers) for the kids, I could hear the sounds of them playing well together in the living room.  Coming off of some highly-involved Mommy-Cal-Ella time downstairs, I was happy to know that I could remove myself and they'd continue to play without me.  This ended when Cal peeked into the kitchen and announced, "Ella's peeing on the floor."  It clearly didn't register with me, so he repeated, "Ella's peeing on the floor," and pointed in her direction to really drive it home.

Cal's a pretty helpful tattle teller (as in, "Mommy, Ella's using a marker!"), so I knew this was really happening.  I grabbed the paper towels and darted into the other room to find her wrapping up, a huge puddle of pee sitting underneath her and starting to swarm around her bare feet.  She was showing no signs of feeling bad about it, and I think it was this that bothered me the most.  As I started to lay into her, she looked at me with a smug smile on her face, ignoring everything I was saying to her.  I continued yelling as I cleaned her and her mess up.  I don't even think I got her a replacement pair of undies -- she ran around the house with naked buns for awhile after that.

Had she actually tried to make it to the potty but failed, I would not have laid into her like I did.  I get that accidents happen.  I have a really hard time calling these potty incidents on Sunday "accidents."  Maybe the second one was a legitimate accident, but coming off the first one with Ella's obstinate, negative handling of my requests for her to use the potty just prior to her peeing on the floor, I was too pissed to consider it anything but Ella being difficult to get a rise out of me.  And don't forget the smug smile as she did it.

I was wrong to handle these the way I did, I know.  But I really don't feel bad about it.  And there's really no telling for sure, but maybe it worked.  Ella had a great, accident-free, potty-cooperative Saturday.  Will we see that again on Sunday?  That remains to be seen.  At a minimum, I've "re-booted" and don't expect to fly off the handle if we don't.