Potty Training

Lily has officially passed the 3 years and 3 months mile stone without being potty trained. I won't bore you with the excruciating details of our trials. It is hard to be the mom of a little one who is behind the curve. At every milestone, Lily is always behind her peers. She didn’t sit until well after six months, she didn’t walk until fourteen months, talking didn’t begin until well into her second year. Once she makes it to the milestones, she seems to catch up rather quickly. All the little ones in her playgroup who walked and talked before Lily are all running and playing at the same level with her today. So it would seem that she is not developmentally delayed, at least in my humble mommy opinion, it seems as if she just comes about her development at a different time table than EVERY other child on the planet. Plus she is stubborn.

She has decided not to sit on the potty at all any more. She is done. (She will sometimes sit on the potty for her daddy, but he is never home and she still won't go on the potty even for daddy). I tried coercion, bribes, screaming and yelling, naked all day, inviting over her potty-trained friends for peer pressure, blah, blah, blah. I have successfully potty trained before, even spent several years potty training other people’s kids as a career. I feel that I need a t-shirt that says, “I am not an idiot”. Maybe I am an idiot. Maybe someday I will look back and laugh about what a trial Lily can be. Maybe.

Lily and I have come to an impasse about sitting on the potty/toilet so I have stopped talking about it at all. When she asks to wear her regular underwear, I say ok. When she has an accident she helps me clean it up, but I don’t mention the potty/toilet. Let’s face it she knows, she is being stubborn and I have decided to give it a bit of a rest. I am thinking a month or maybe two. During that time, I am not going to mention the potty to Lily at all. There is a potty in the living room, a potty seat on the toilet, if she wants to use it she can. She pretty much hates her pull-ups. I have decided to make her wear pull-ups when we leave the house and to bed, but otherwise I let her wear her underwear and we just clean up the messes, and messes and messes.

In order that I don’t feel guilty about taking a step back and re-grouping before I try to convince Lily to try to be potty trained again, I have decided to focus on the other aspects of potty training. Like dressing herself. Right now, Lily will change herself, all by herself. She takes off the dirty, underwear or pull-ups and cleans herself with the wippies and then she puts on the new underwear/pull-ups and pants. She does this all on her own. I help her a bit with the hand washing afterwards. I guess my thinking is that when she gets past her stubborn fit about sitting on the potty she will be able to go in and take off her own pants and go to the potty all on her own. I think that this is part of the problem, she doesn’t like me to be so involved in her private potty stuff. I am hoping that when she feels confident in her ability to dress and undress she will feel better about sitting on the potty.

The other issue is the feeling of letting go of the pee or poop while sitting on the potty this freaks her out. She would rather go into when there is something against her skin, instead of just letting it fall into the potty/toilet. The letting go bit is a trial for her. Can’t seem to get it into her head that it is ok. During the naked all day portion, that lasted three weeks, she would scream as if she saw a monster and cry ever time the potty came out and there wasn’t underwear or pull-ups on her. Now she pretty much refuses to be naked, she will go and dress herself. I would have to hide all her clothes and listen to her scream for clothing to try the naked all the time method again. I am not willing to withhold clothing from my baby.

This is where we are on the potty training. We love our Lily. She is so precious, so happy, so sweet. She just doesn’t want to use the potty or toilet and I haven’t found a way to make her. Did I tell you she can count to 50 in English, 10 in Spanish, and 10 in Japanese? I have all the hope in the world that she will catch on to the potty and be fine someday or not. We are in the very largest size in pull-ups, I guess the next step will be depends.