We have passed through potty-training purgatory and have officially entered potty-training hell.
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If you don’t want to know the gory details, gentle reader, I suggest you move on.
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Several months back, when the little man was about to graduate from daycare, I set out to find the best possible pre-school environment for him. And I found it…in the form of a wonderful little montessori located near my office. Unfortunately they only accept fully potty-trained pupils. And understandably so. So at home we worked at it and worked at it, but to no avail. I realized we’d need a plan B to hold us over until he was ready. So I found a pre-school that I initially gave a capital A, for adequate. Now I no longer think it is even that. It is not a good fit for my child, or for me. I’d gladly keep him home if I could, but it isn’t feasible at this time. So to be able to move him to the montessori instead, he needs to have more control over his bodily functions. We seemed to be making decent progress for a while. Working at it in the all-too-brief time we spend together in the evenings, and the generally action-packed weekends. But this past weekend left me frazzled. The little man willingly spent lots of time sitting on both the little and regular-sized potties, but failed to, er, produce. Despite incentives (yes, I’ve been told bribery makes for bad parenting, but I’m at my wits’ end here) and despite lots of coaching, he neglected to tell me when he needed a little help, or if he thought he needed to go. And my frequent questioning was either quickly met with a “No”, or a plea for candy. The inconsistency and timing problems resulted in a lot of messes for mom to clean up. At one point I was preparing lunch. He was out of my eyesight for all of five minutes. I returned to discover that he had:
a) used one of his markers to color much of his pantsless lower half and
b) had created a small ocean on the dining room floor.
After our meal I decided to give him a bath, to wash off the blue marker. Just a tad too late he pleaded “I need help”, as he was fouling the tub with a substance that would have been easier to clean up off of the floor. So I quickly washed and toweled him off. Then unwisely let him wander off into his room, in the buff. I set about the arduous task of thoroughly cleaning not just the tub, but each of the twenty-three bath toys that it contained at the time of the incident. Every now and then I called out to him, to ask if he was all right…if he wanted help getting dressed. But he just replied with “it’s ok”. When the sterilization was complete I walked in to his room to find another unexpected situation (though I should have known better).
Problem 1: He had been standing on his toybox, baring all in front of the window.
Problem 2: He had peed all over said window, which caused massive amounts of urine to splash back on to the toybox and the dresser.
Thankfully we have hardwood floors. At this point I was nearly ready to give up for the day and let him relax in a diaper or pull-up. But no, I decided we must forge ahead. So we went back downstairs, with the little man clad in fresh underwear and pants. Things went well for a while. He showed some initiative and sat on the potty a few times, all on his own. But he gave up around snack time declaring “all done”. All done what? All done sitting pantsless on the potty I guess. I went into the kitchen to grab some animal crackers and soy milk. Returned, once again, to find a puddle. That he’d made through his clothes. I finally declared defeat for the day and grabbed him a diaper, before washing another load of laundry. At this point I feel like persistence is futile.