Simply Mother

My first daughter taught me an important lesson about potty training, would you like to know what it is? It can be summed up in three words:

Don’t do it.

Seriously, don’t. At least not if your child is anything like mine.

It was a nightmare. And it only ended when I finally “woke up” and realized that the girl just needed to do it on her own. Seriously, on her own. I was there to help if help was requested and otherwise leave her alone about it! She didn’t need me pestering her about her personal bodily functions. She didn’t care for my reminders. She didn’t want me praising her “successes” or acting disappointed when she had an accident. Which she did frequently. Oh goodness, was this a trying experience!

But one I learned so much from. So much about myself. About my daughter. About the extent of my power as a parent. Sometime maybe I’ll dig out and republish the old post about it, but that’s for another day.

Tonight I want to tell you about how my second daughter appears to be potty training herself.

(I say “appears” because you never know with 2-year-old’s, this may not be permanent. Last summer, right after she turned two, she suddenly wanted to wear panties and started using the potty. She did it fully on her own–would come to me and ask for help unbuttoning her pants and then she’d go in and climb up all by herself, wipe, wash her hands, the whole nine yards. She did this for about a week and then started having a lot of accidents and when I asked her if she’d like to wear diapers again she did and hasn’t looked back much since.)

Last week, when Baby Sister was only a day or two old, we were all playing together on my bed when Jade started getting kind of rough with her older sister. I started with the usual, “It looks like she doesn’t want to be touched like that . . . ” mumbo-jumbo but then had a momentary stroke of what turned out to be genius–especially for a person like me, who so often forgets to be playful and silly.

I pretended my hand was a crocodile and playfully tried to eat Jade. She thought it was delightful, and played right along: “Don’t eat me, don’t eat me! Just give me kisses!” Which the crocodile did, happily, all over her face and everywhere else, and then somehow before we even left the bed that morning the crocodile had turned into a monster and had become her new best friend.

Friends, actually, since there are two of them (naturally) and sometimes even four–her own hands often join in the game. She requests their involvement numerous times throughout the day.

She talks to them as if they were real, and if I forget for a moment and come out of character and respond to her in my normal voice, without making the appropriate open/close motions with my hands to signify it’s the monster talking? I get, “No, I’m talking to the monster, not you!”

If there’s something she’s resisting (as 2-year-old’s are wont to do, even when it’s not anything particularly dreadful), the monsters can offer to watch and she will do it with enthusiasm!

Of course the monsters would never ask her to do something harmful or something she truly wouldn’t want to do, (and that’s why they still have her complete trust.) They only turn up for things that she normally has no problem doing, but for the elusive reasons that only exist in the minds of two-year-old’s, she is saying no to–for the fun of it, as far as I can tell.

Half the time she’s the one who asks for the monsters. Like I’ll be trying to get her jammies on and she’s playing around, passively resisting me, and she can tell I’m starting to get exasperated because I just want to put the jammies on and get on with things, and so she’ll say, “I want the monsters to do it!” and my hands instantly become monsters and she giggles endlessly as we easily accomplish the task.

Anyway, so the very first night after the monsters were introduced into our lives, she was talking to them at bedtime about diapers and panties and what you do with each (all of her own volition, I promise I wasn’t intending to use these monster friends of her own creation as a ploy to get her to use the potty!) when she suddenly wanted to show the monsters how to put pee in a potty!

I thought maybe it was just another good way to stall actually going to sleep but in the morning she put on panties and has pretty much asked the monsters to watch her go potty ever since! We’ve only put diapers on her at night since then. She has had a few misses but they didn’t discourage her–she just cleaned it up and moved on.

The monsters sometimes ask her if she wants them to watch her go, when they notice her doing the potty dance, and she always says no but then when they say okay, she replies, “Actually, I need to go potty! I do want you to watch me!” And off we go.

She still really wants the monsters to come watch her every time–though she will go even if they can’t make it right away. I’m wondering if this will be the real thing and the need for the monsters will just eventually peter out . . . or if we have another few rounds of quasi-potty-learning sessions to go?

It’s kind of weird that she’s doing it now–right after getting a new baby sister. You hear all the time that previously potty-trained kids totally regress at the arrival of a new sibling. But so far little Carrie has gotten nothing but total adoration from this big sister.

I imagine once she becomes more of a person and less of a plaything we might see some of the rivalry struggles, but for now, Jade couldn’t be more insistent that she is a big sister.

Whether this new potty thing is permanent or not, either way is fine with me. I want her to do it when she is good and ready and not a second sooner!

Filed in: child development • family • parenting | April 3, 2009