For months now, I have scoured the internet looking for support. As a mother to twins over three and half and still in diapers, I was at my wit’s end. My daughters knew how to use the potty. They used it if I asked them to. They had no fear using the potty. Yet, they resisted. They felt comfortable sitting in poop and pee till I checked and changed them.
From annoyance to anxiety to worry, my emotions travelled the spectrum. I felt ashamed to admit I had failed as a mother. From forcing to sit them on the potty to letting them run sans pants, nothing seemed to work. Do they not feel the sensation, are they unable to communicate? I despaired. Online forums talked about children in diapers at 4, 5 and 6. I felt with the parents of these posters. I would be them in a year I thought. The despair and loneliness they talked about hit home.
Was there no one who faced this? Why do every one I speak to talk patronizingly I wondered. Your child using the potty at 2 and 2.5 is a matter of pride I admit but that does not mean I have not tried. Is there no one who has tried and failed?
This past week my husband and I took a week off our schedule to keep the girl’s home and drill it into them that poop and pee belong in the potty. After much thought, I bought Lora Jensen’s 3 day potty training eBook. I was skeptical.
We did what she suggested. Our daughters were not trained in 3 days. Not even in 10. But the method did work. They did learn to understand the need to pee and poop. While we are not out of the woods yet, I feel more hopeful than I have felt in months.
What was different this time around?
We as parents learned to relinquish control (well! not entirely true but we did try!). We learned that the children decide when and what they want to do. We learned that praise goes a long way. Much longer than treats or gifts. We learned to let our hair down and go down to the floor with the children. We learned what a joyous, amazing thing childhood is. We learned that the sight of turd floating on the toilet bowl can be the happiest sight ever. We learned that the smallest odds our children overcome can send us over the moon. We learned that children teach us to be patient and tackle our shortcomings.
We also learned that pull ups are no different from diapers. They just prolong the process and make our children take longer to unlearn what they have learned. That it is OK to pee and poop wherever they are. They do not understand the feeling or the impulse that causes them to pee or poop. A key part of the learning is to make them aware and listen to their bodies. It means letting them take pride in checking if they are dry. It is in all the little things.
We also learned that just like every other thing in parenting, no two children are alike. Not even twins.
Most of all we learned that potty training does not have to be stressful.
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