“I Do It!”: Potty Training and Patience

My youngest peed on the couch today, and the war of potty training continues with her having won this round. I saw her wander out into the dining room, casual and unassuming, and then I noticed her rather wet-looking underpants, whereupon her older sister came out of the living room screaming, “Maddie peed on the couch! Maddie peed on the couch!” Now imagine the strangled cry of a cat whose tail has been stepped on and you’ll be able to envision my wife’s reaction to this shocking news. Needless to say it was not good.

What kills me is that sometimes she is good, very very good, when it comes to using the potty at the prescribed times and in the prescribed potty area. The potty area includes the toilet and its surrounding effects. It used to just be the toilet itself, but by the eighth time she used the floor directly in front of the toilet we acceded that area to her. There was no longer any use fighting it. At least she had held out long enough to be “almost” to the potty, so giving that to her was a win-win. What isn’t a win-win is when she refuses to tell us before she goes.

Ironically, Maddie likes to claim pretty much everything else for herself. She won’t let me help her out of the car. “I do it!” she tells me, folding her little arms up and puffing out that lip. She’s determined, that girl. In the grocery store she always wants to hold the basket when we’re gone in for only a couple of items. “I do it!” she exclaims, yanking the basket out of the others it was residing in with a smug look on her face. At breakfast time, after eating her cereal, she absolutely must bring her own bowl out to the kitchen, even though she doesn’t drink the milk and it sloshes dangerously with each step she takes. “I do it!” she nearly shouts when I try to take it from her and get hit with an arcing current of milk right on the chin. I should have learned my lesson.

But when it comes to using the potty, she is unusually quiet. I listen for the defiant “I do it!” but to no avail. She is as quiet as Jimmy Olsen when he’s alone with Lois Lane, and it’s oh so frustrating. She can do it too. I know she can because during the school day they take her in like clockwork to sit on the potty and she will do her business there more often than not. Perhaps one day out of the five-day week she will come home in a different outfit than the one she wore on the way in, but that’s usually it. And even at home she has gone entire days without wetting herself, but when she does it she does it in waves (no pun intended).

4:30 yesterday, she wets her pants. I make her sit on the toilet until she pees at least a little in there, hoping that it will reinforce the standard. It apparently doesn’t take, though, because…

at 5:15 yesterday, she wets her pants again, and I tear my hair out before cleaning it up. Ouch.

I know at some point she’ll get it. I can see in my mind’s eye a day when she’ll say “I do it!” and it will apply to the potty as well as everything else she claims even now. I just can’t keep from wishing that the day would be tomorrow.

Sam

On Parenting and Parenthood