Potty Training Failure: A Mom’s Disgusting Attempt

The last 6 months led up to this moment. It was time to potty train my little girl! It WAS her second birthday, after all! I thought it was time to make the transition from diapers to panties, yes I did! So, using the knowledge I built after months and months of no research and limited talk with friends about potty training techniques, I worked tirelessly for hours and hours (meaning almost 3 hours) to launch my little darling from “Baby” to “Big Girl”!

Here’s how I did it (and how you should NOT do it).

Step 1: I set the oven timer for 10 minutes.

Step 2: I took off her diaper.

Step 3: I let her play outside an arms-reach doing whatever the heckola she wanted to do.

Step 4: When the timer went off, I walked her to the bathroom, she picked her toilet of choice (kid potty or big potty), and she sat on it until she got bored. I sang Potty Training Songs to keep her interested longer.

Step 5: She didn’t go, so I let her off, told her that she couldn’t use toilet paper, because there was no potty in the toilet, and let her wash her hands (one of her favorite things in the WORLD to do).

Step 6: I repeated steps 1-5.

Step 7: After almost 3 hours, it was naptime, so I put a diaper on her and put her to bed.

Step 8: During naptime, I walked around the house to tidy-up a bit. In the process, I found two urine puddles. Luckily, both were on hard flooring (at least I HOPE there were only two spots!) Cora: 2, Mommy: 0.

Step 9: When she woke up from her nap, I changed her diaper and forgot about the whole potty training thing.

I worked tirelessly for a few hours potty training her! Why didn’t it work?!

You’re thinking this is a joke, right?

Listen, when my daughter was 18-months-old, I decided to start prepping her to be potty trained. I wasn’t extremely consistent, but I would put her on the potty every once in a while and talk to her about the process of going potty. We talked about tinkling and plopping in the toilet. We also discussed that if she tinkles or plops in the toilet, that she’d get a Honey Stick (flavored honey). Over these 6 months, she learned to tell me before she had to go poop, and sometimes when I put her on the toilet she would actually go. ‘Success,’ I thought! ‘This girl is going to ROCK potty training when it’s time! Sometimes she would just ask for a Honey Stick… that was a no-go without a tinkle or plop. I’m no sucker!

Now, I noticed that most of my friends had potty trained their children around 2 and 1/2, some even after 3. I didn’t think much of it. I just figured that was when they decided to do it. If I do it before then, that just means the fewer diapers I’ll have to buy/wash (we use both cloth and disposable diapers). Some miracle books tell you that you can potty train children who aren’t even showing signs of being potty-training-ready yet. I even bought one of these books. The problem is, I haven’t read it yet, which means I definitely can’t say it doesn’t work! I promise I will read it soon, apply the principles, and then share my experiences with you!

Steve Hodges, M.D. just came out with an article in The Huffington Post called “A Doctor Responds: Don’t Potty Train Your Baby” (thanks Christy Seidman of the Growing Up Fort Collins blog for sharing this on Fb). Here’s a blurb:

“Chronic holding is a damaging habit, and in my experience, children trained early — especially before age 2 — are more prone to developing this habit than kids trained around age 3, though kids trained later are certainly not immune from holding, and early trainers are not destined to become holders.”

His whole article discusses the ridiculous notion that parents have that they need to potty train their children early. To be perfectly honest, his article scared me into wanting to wait to fully potty train Cora. I certainly don’t want to create a habit of holding in her potty, which he says is common among children, because they do not want to stop their play to do something as mundane as going potty on the toilet. “Chronic holders” can have severe bladder issues down the road, he says. One of my favorite parts of his article is this:

“…the most primitive form of toileting is going wherever and whenever you need to (think of any wild animal), which diapers actually promote. There is nothing natural about using a toilet.”

So, in conclusion, I’d like to suggest that we all ban against the unnatural use of toilets in our society. Who’s with me?!

No, but really, I think we can take the pressure off of ourselves to quickly get our kiddos out of diapers and into panties, boxers, or briefs. They WANT to do this for themselves one day, which will, 1) take the guess work out of it for us, 2) hopefully decrease the likelihood that they will become chronic “holders”, damaging their little bladders, and 3) take stress out of all of our lives!

Completely contradictory to all of that, I want to announce that I will use my child as a guinea pig to try out the “3 Day Potty Training” method derived by Lora Jensen. I hereby promise to uphold all principles written by Ms. Jensen in her “3 Day Potty Training” e-Book, following them as exact as is humanly (and Darcyly) possible! I can’t tell you WHEN I will do this, but I can promise you that I will tell you ALLLLL about it!

CALL TO ACTION: Please post your potty-training experiences below! Do you have a miracle 6-month-old potty trained child like the one Dr. Hodges speaks about in his article, or have you waited a bit to train your little one?

Related articles

• Potty Training Part 1 (jennbartnick.wordpress.com)
• Potty Training is for the Birds (countingchickens.wordpress.com)
• I see potty training in my immediate future (smalltowntxmama.wordpress.com)
• Potty Training my Resistant Child (justsoyouknw.wordpress.com)
• A Doctor Responds: Don’t Potty Train Your Baby: Steve Hodges, M.D., The Huffington Post