I hate poop. It’s harder for me than throw up.
No, seriously. I hate poop.
I lucked out with Sammi that she NEVER had a poop accident while potty-training. She figured out pooping on the toilet before peeing.
Elli has been a whole different story. We didn’t even attempt to potty train until after Scott was born. Then we let her run naked and start to figure things out. She was almost completely potty-trained, but then I realized it’d been a couple days since she’d last pooped. I put her in underwear and hoped for the best. After all, Sammi hadn’t had any problems with pooping. After a couple of days of cleaning up poopy underwear, I was not a happy mama.
I started calling the poop yucky and trying to help her understand that pooping in underwear is yucky. All that did was throw us back to diapers. Elli refused to wear underwear any more. She refused to sit on the toilet. If I changed a poopy diaper she plead with me to not say yuck. I realized I had shamed her and her poop instead of teaching her how to get the poop in the toilet.
We took a break. I bought another box of diapers and told her when it was gone we’d try again. About half-way through the box she started peeing in her potty chair again. She got more and more consistent with using the potty. I braced myself and promised myself that I would not freak out about the poop.
It’s been roughly four months and we’ve reached a happy medium. She wears pull-ups. She pees in the toilet every time. She has only pooped in the toilet once. I’ve tried my best to replicate that day. However we encouraged her, helped her, or whatever it was that allowed her to “get it” that day, but to no avail. {sigh} My current strategy is loving her, cleaning up the poop and waiting for her to figure it out on her own.
What I’ve learned about potty-training
- Every child is different
- Every child is on their own schedule
- Shaming a child who has accidents is way more detrimental than helpful
- Potty-training, like most other parenting experiences, will test you to the point of exhaustion
- Potty-training, like most other parenting experiences, refines your parenting skills
I’m hoping that we get this figured out soon. We have a family trip coming up and I’d like to have this mastered before driving across the country and back.
