Failing Spectacularly at Potty Training

For the last several weeks, maybe even months our daughter has been very vocal about going potty in her diaper. On occasion she has even gone to her diaper cubby to get herself a diaper, wipes and hiney cream to let us know she needs her butt changed. So, my husband and I decided that at some point during this summer we would take a four day weekend and dedicate our time on potty training our little stinker. That weekend just happened. If we had been successful we would not have had to stock up on diapers and wipes today, but that is exactly what we did. Friday morning comes, our first day of potty training and my husband and I are like Christmas morning excited. I know, I know, we’re crazy, but we were pretty pumped. We thought we were as prepared as we could be, however we were greatly mistaken.

Somehow, we all managed to sleep until 7:30am on Friday morning. I guess the parenting Gods knew we would need our beauty sleep. The husband and I spring out of bed all wide-eyed and bushy tailed and we head into our spawns room. We put her on the adorable Elmo toilet seat cover we bought her and she goes pee-pee in the potty immediately. My husband and I are celebrating like we just won the lottery. “You went pee-pee in the potty like a big girl!” and “You did such a good job!” and “Yay!” We all start clapping our hands like we’re at a concert. We show her the new Elmo underwear we purchased and she couldn’t wait to get them on. She is fired up about them and my husband and I are smiling like the biggest and proudest idiots in the world. Holy crap, what if this turns out to be super easy? What if we potty train her by the end of this weekend? We were both fired up, motivated, focused and 1000% insane.

We all head downstairs for coffee, milk and some morning snuggles. We are so ridiculously prepared (so we thought) for whatever was to come. Extra undies in the bathroom, wipes, extra toilet paper, paper towels and lysol wipes for accident cleanups, and the amazing and portable Elmo toilet seat cover that we had beginners luck on in the upstairs bathroom. After some morning snuggles, coffee, and the first run of Elmo’s Potty Time on demand, the hubster gets ready to go to the gym. We send Daddy off and its just us girls, and the slobbery three year old English bulldog my daughter calls, “Puh-puh.” All of the sudden my little stinker gives me this pained look and points to her Elmo undies. “Do you have to go potty, baby girl?” I say. “Yes. Yes!” She says. So, we take off running towards the bathroom. I’ve got her underwear down and she will not let me put her on the potty. She’s stiffening up her legs and saying, “No, No, No!” and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do. I stand her up in front of the toilet and she just stares at me. “All done,” she says. “Honey, we are not done, you didn’t sit on the potty.” She then grabs some toilet paper and starts to wipe herself and tosses it into the toilet. “All done.” I wanted to laugh, but instead I just said, “Baby girl, you didn’t go potty. You have to sit on the potty.” Blank stare… “Do you have to go pee-pee’s?” Shakes her head. “Okay, lets wash your hands stinky.”

She gets up on her stool and she has her hands over the sink. I turn on the running water and get her hands all lathered up. As we are rinsing the soap off she says, “Wet, wet.” 

“I know baby girl, we will dry your hands with the towel.” I go to reach for the towel, and happened to look down and noticed that she has peed all over herself and her adorable strawberry stool I found at the Home Goods. “Oh no!” She says. “Mess, mess,” she says. “Yes, baby girl. big mess.” I explain to her that she has to pee in the potty, we go over everything a million times and I have her help me clean up her mess. She gets all excited about it. What a little weirdo. By 9:30am she had already gone through three pairs of her new Elmo undies. Three accidents in about an hour, and I’m just astonished at how much liquid is coming out of this kid. She had barely taken three sips of her milk, how in the world was she peeing this much and why was this kid refusing to sit on the toilet?!

For the rest of the day it was more of the same. Her telling us she had to pee, but not wanting to sit on the potty, then peeing within a three foot radius of the toilet. By lunch time we were halfway through her undies and willing to do about anything to make this work. So, I run out and buy extra undies, an extra toilet seat for the upstairs bathroom, a jar, m&m’s, stickers, little books and prizes everything that I had read on a Pinterest post and everything that I said I wouldn’t do. However, there we were willing to bribe our kid with candy and prizes so we wouldn’t have to clean up anymore pee for the rest of the weekend. By late afternoon she was so annoyed with any talk of the potty that she stopped telling us when she was going she would just go. OR she would sit on the potty while looking at a book, and then pee immediately after we got her off the toilet. It was a frustrating disaster. The next morning she woke up and wouldn’t even sit on the potty. She wanted nothing to do with it. By lunch time, we had given up on potty training.

You can say we quit too soon, we’re awful parents, and that we failed our kid… But, we know our kid, and she isn’t ready right now. She’s nineteen months old and she’s extremely vocal about so many things, but we rushed her into this. We thought that she was ready, and we were wrong. This isn’t the first time we’ve been wrong as parents and it won’t be the last. In a few weeks or maybe even months we will try it out again, and eventually that little stinker will be potty trained. I’m sharing our story of potty time failure, because its completely okay. We aren’t bad parents, she isn’t behind, and it is okay that this didn’t work out on the first attempt. We have so much pressure and responsibility on our shoulders as parents already, we need to give ourselves a break when things don’t work out like we thought they would. So, that’s exactly what the husband and I did. We took a break and enjoyed the rest of our long weekend. We grilled out with friends on Saturday night. The whole family went on a long walk on Sunday morning and played with our toddler. Today, Monday, we took our kid to daycare and Mommy and Daddy had a much needed date day. We had brunch, went to Target to stock up on diapers and wipes, and spent the rest of the day doing whatever the hell we wanted. Our failure turned out to be a wonderful weekend and that’s all we could have really asked for. Our little chunker will be potty trained some day, just not today…