Lessons from the Potty War

I know I posted a long time ago about the difficulties we'd had potty training Chaela.  What many of you don't know is that, up until a few days ago, we were still having problems.  At almost 3 and 1/2 and after over a year of attempting to potty train, Chaela was officially considered "delayed of resistant" (as diagnosed by the internet). 

Over Christmas and up until I went back to work at the very end of January, she seemed to be doing alright.  Then work started, and everything crashed and burned.  She was going through upwards of six pairs of pants per day some days.  Not only is that annoying and a pain to clean, but she just doesn't have enough clothing to be doing that, because I'm not a 'laundry-every-other-day' kind of mom to begin with.

We tried several things, from anger and punishment to reward her for good behavior to every combination in between.  Nothing changed.  Work ended, and I thought that might be enough to get her back on track, but it wasn't.  It didn't matter what we did or didn't do, or how we talked to her about it, or how we reacted to her accidents, she just kept having them.

I couldn't take it anymore.  Well, no, I was way past that.  I felt hopeless.  So I sat down at the computer and did a google search for "potty trained kids having accidents" (or something like that).  The search got a ton of hits.  Yay!  I'm not alone!

There are several reasons why a child might be resistant to potty training, but as I went down the lists on several websites, one reason stood out over and over again:

"Most children who are resistant to toilet training are enmeshed in a power struggle with their parents. The cause of the power struggle is usually reminder resistance – an oppositional response to excessive reminders to sit on the toilet. In addition, most resistant children have been held on the toilet against their will. Many children have also been lectured too much, and some have been spanked or punished in other ways for not cooperating. Many parents make these mistakes, especially if they have a strong-willed child. Most children who are delayed in toilet training have a difficult, strong-willed temperament." (Quoted text taken from a pediatrician's website)

All of this sounded familiar.  Yes, we had constantly reminded Chaela to go to the potty, we had lectured her, forced her to sit on the potty against her will (in our defense, it was because she was dancing and holding herself, and she DID go), and yes, she'd been spanked for accidents.  The last part sounded especially familiar: "Most children who are delayed in toilet training have a difficult, strong-willed temperament."

"Holy crap, that's us!" I thought.  I eagerly scrolled down, excited that this was a real problem other people were having, and with high expectations for the solution.  Imagine my shock when every website I looked at basically said that the solution to potty-training a strong willed child was to stop potty-training them.

What?

I laughed out loud at the first site that told me that, but then the next place I looked said the same thing.  Then the next, and the next, and the next.  Stop.  Stop bothering your child.  Stop reminding them to go.  Stop asking them.  Stop reacting when they had an accident.  And absolutely under no circumstances should they be punished.

So we stopped.  I had one last, very brief talk with Chaela.

"Ok, honey.  We're done.  Mommy and daddy are done telling you to go to the potty.  If you need to go potty, you're in charge.  And you're in charge of changing your own panties.  And if you have an accident, we'll help you clean up, but you'll have to do that, too."

The first thing that happened surprised me.  I felt a change.  I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders.  No, she wasn't potty trained, but it was no longer my problem, or my fault.  It was her issue to deal with (and in my opinion, Chaela is both old enough and smart enough to do so, so while I did feel some guilt initially, it didn't last).  The best thing that came of this was that I was no longer angry when she had an accident.  If she came to me with wet pants, I could just shrug and tell her to go put them in the laundry basket and put on clean ones.  This was a huge deal, because sometimes I scared myself with how angry I would get at her for having accidents.  Now I wasn't angry, because it wasn't my fault.

Then something else happened that surprised me.  IT WORKED.  After only about a week of Chaela being in charge of her own potty-training, she's pretty much stopped having wet panties.  It used to be that even when her pants were dry, her panties were a little bit wet.  Not anymore.  For the past two days, she's had almost completely dry panties.  Hallelujah.

Anyway, this is a huge long blog post about something most other people probably won't care about, but I wanted to post it, just in case anyone else goes through something similar in the future (I know a lot of my friends have kids that will be potty training soon).  But I also wanted to get this out there because talking, or writing, as the case may be, allows me to crystallize my thoughts, and this taught me something important about Chaela, and about motherhood.

I can't control her.  Even now, Chaela is not a complacent, obedient child.  I can only assume that as she gets older, her stubbornness will grow.  I can't punish it out of her, and I can't positively reinforce it out of her.  If Chaela ever does anything, it is expressly because she decided it was a good idea.  I'm so worried about dealing with her as a teenager, and I'm glad I had this experience, because I think it will help me. 

I have to teach her correct principles, and then (the hardest thing I'll ever have to do) let her govern herself.  I have to trust her, and I need her to trust me.  She won't ever trust me if all I ever do is punish her, so I have to back off on the unimportant things and choose my battles wisely.  I have to let her do her own thing, even when it seems completely counter intuitive (like with potty training, where my instinct was to force her to sit on the potty more often, remind her more often, etc.).  I have to trust that she's smart enough to do things on her own.  All this, of course, taking into account her age and her safety.  I am a control freak when it comes to my kids, so this is going to be difficult for me.

Parenting is hard.