The Potty Training Begins

Nothing in your life leading up to the moment it starts will prepare you for potty training. No one ever tells you how it is going to work, or what is going to happen, or the amount of time you will spend talking about poop and pee.

I have not been stressed out about potty training at all. I am ready for Bronwen to remain in diapers indefinitely. After all potty training is really going to slow us down during those long car trips. I would prefer that she stay a little toddler and just gets used to the diaper. It eliminates the stress of embarrassment due to “accidents”, potty talk in public, and just the weirdness of teaching a human to poop on cue.

Bronwen starting sitting on the practice potty a few months ago. She would see me sitting on the toilet and like everything else she does these days, she wanted to do what mommy was doing. I would take off her diaper and sit her there while I went. She would smile and tap her feet on the floor waiting for something to happen. Of course nothing ever happens as she doesn’t understand yet what she supposed to do, but it is pretty cute to see her sitting there. I know that is kind of weird, but anything your kid does that is vaguely grown up is always cute. I don’t know why.

Things have been progressing in this fashion for a few months now. She sits on the potty and taps her feet. She has taken to demanding toilet paper which she holds in her hand then throws away in the “big” toilet when I flush. She always has to wash her hands afterwards. We’ve had a few accidents because I tend to let her run around the house naked. She has suddenly realized that her diaper is uncomfortable and will therefore refuse to have it put back on, and I really don’t care if she doesn’t wear it inside. She will run around until either I get too nervous about the possible mess, or the mess happens. This past Sunday she was standing naked behind me as I was folding dry laundry when she started to cry. This cry was one of those “I am hurt and freaked out” cries so I dropped what I was doing and turned to help her. There she was, naked and crying, her foot in the air, she hates when her feet get dirty, and there was a huge pile of poop with a toddler sized foot print right in the middle of it. We cleaned up the poop, washed her feet and put on a new diaper, but for the rest of the day she would not sit on the potty.

So, as potty training goes, we haven’t really done anything proactive about moving her out of diapers. We are just letting nature take its course. She’s not even two years old, after all. But yesterday things changed. I spoke with her daycare about potty training and they informed me that she is peeing on the potty at school and therefore we should be actively training her at home. I thought our laid back approach was going to work perfectly, but this new daycare pressure is stressing me out. Now I have to learn something about this process. Now I have to, because I am a freak about having information, read about the physiology about toddler bladders and the impact of forced potty training will have on her future self esteem and all about the different methodologies of training a little human to go in a potty. How do you teach something that you can’t remember ever having learned?