As you can see from the title of this post, we are currently in the trenches of potty training Charlotte. We started this adventure on Wednesday, and while things are going well right now it's not because she is fully potty trained and we are yet another success story of the famed Three Day Potty Training boot camp that apparently works for 125% of all kids or something like that. No. It is because we declared that method utterly ridiculous and frustrating and stressful and came to our senses.
Let me back up.
If you spend any time at all on Pinterest in the "Kids" section, you have probably come across pins about potty training--particularly ones about potty training in three days (you've also likely come across a million pins on pregnancy announcement and gender reveal ideas that get excessively more ridiculous, to the point where when Charlotte has a child she will be expected to hire a private plane to write the gender of her unborn child in blue or pink smoke in the sky--but that is a soapbox for another day). If you Google "3 day potty training" you will find an enormous amount of information, including the website of the person who coined the method. I'll let you check this out if you want.
This method appealed to me (in theory) because of its "rip the Band-Aid off" approach. I figured potty training will never be easy, so why not just go all in and get it done? The method emphasizes that you not leave the house for three days--and even goes as far to say you never leave your child's side. No distractions of any kind, just constant potty training mode. This idea sounded...well, about as fun as it sounds. But we went for it, thinking that a little pain was worth the gain in the end.
That mentality is true for a lot of things. But we quickly realized that it is NOT true for us and potty and training. What resulted was a lot of pain and very little gain, on top of a pile of anxiety and stress from a tiny girl who was completely confused. I won't go into too many details about the specific method itself, since it is heavily copyrighted and I have no desire to link back to the site since I don't believe in the method. I don't mean any disrespect to the person who came up with it--it clearly works for many people. It's just not for me to sell.
I also won't go into the specifics of her Charlotte's successes and...messes since it's both gross and personal. What I will say, however, is that day one seemed like a huge success. It seemed like she was actually potty trained after just 24 hours. I was exhausted and a bit stir crazy and I know she was too, but otherwise things seemed okay.
Day 2 started off on the wrong foot. I could tell she was already frustrated with me being completely in her space again and I was just as fed up with the idea. We were impatient with each other by 9AM. On top of that, her nerves were frayed (and so were mine) from being questioned so much and placed on the potty so much that it backfired. She became almost afraid of it and threw a fit as soon as she was even placed
near it. Accidents galore, tears galore, and by the time she went in for her bedtime bath she had what amounted to a toddler nervous breakdown. She didn't want to do any of her typical pre-bed activities like reading or singing and just looked at me with tear filled eyes and said "no songs Mommy, just hold you?" (She hasn't mastered pronoun use yet and calls herself "you"). It broke my heart and that's when I asked myself "why?" (In my mind I said something much more colorful, but you get the idea).
I felt defeated, she was a mess, my patience was all but gone and it just seemed like there had to be a better way. And it turns out there
is a better way: we needed to calm down. What was the rush? Why three days? Why make something that is already hard that much harder by adding in a timeline and sense of urgency to it? Especially when, after the great bed incident of August, we
know that she doesn't deal with abrupt change (as in, major changes, not minor things like eating something different for lunch).
As a parent, you get a lot of advice. Most of it is well-meaning from people (strangers, even) who are just trying to share something that worked for them. Some of it is not well-meaning and dished out from judgmental, superior minded people who feel it is their duty to make you feel inadequate. This is not the norm from most people--I think most people intend to do good even if their actions might seem otherwise. What works for 95% of the population might not work for you and your child and that's okay. Someone on Facebook might insist that their child was potty trained by 13 months and yours should be too. That's what worked for them---but it might not for you. And that's okay. Just take a deep breath and remember that most children will not enter first grade in diapers. It's just like walking--some kids walk at 9 months, some (like Charlotte) at almost 17. When she runs around at the playground with a child her age who started walking 6 months before her you can't tell. The same is true for the 13 month old potty phenomenon and your child. When these kids are 8 years old and lined up at their holiday chorus concert you will not be able to pick out the early potty-trainers from the late. I promise.
On top of all the advice, parenting has become a competition of sorts. Parents find a way to "win" over just about everything: how and what they feed their child, how many activities their child is enrolled in, what kind of school their child goes to, what their child wears, reads, watches. It's exhausting and it's easy to fall down the well of comparing and competing.
At the height of my frustration on Thursday night I texted my friend Christine, the mother of a toddler Charlotte's age. The text is not fit for print (my grandmother reads this blog and I'd like to maintain the illusion that I don't swear). She let me vent and echoed what was ringing around in my brain--it doesn't have to be like this. "No pain, no gain" may be true in many cases, but in on this one our slogan is more like "slow and steady wins the race."
What is my point in sharing all of this? On a selfish note, I just needed to get it out of my head. But more than that, I know that many of my friends who read this are parents or thinking of becoming parents. If someone can read this and feel just a little bit better and less stressed about some aspect of potty training or parenting I will be delighted. It's a hard enough job; let's not make it harder.
That's all.
Have a lovely weekend.
~Stacy
