The Potty Chronicles: Confessions of a Madwoman

Originally published on June 27, 2011

I wish I could say that our potty training adventures bring out the best in me; that I approach each saga channeling my inner June Cleaver with a happy sing-song voice and dazzling smile, full of encouragement and enthusiasm that assumes nothing less than success as my darling girl beams up at me with proud little eyes.

Not so.

I think I more closely resemble this gal:

Oh I can encourage, alright. I can coax, prod, and reason, offer up m&ms till I’m blue in the face, beg and plead...and eventually threaten and count to three while giving The Look. But at this stage of the game I’m about out of tactics.


It’s been a long battle: 6+ months if you count actively “trying,” closer to a year if you add in the initial novelty of sitting on the potty (which quickly wore off) or hinting at/talking about/reading about All Things Potty. To include the Elmo’s Potty Time DVD which plays on loop every time we get into the car. (Guess which little girl refuses to watch any other DVD since Elmo’s Potty Time came on the scene?) Suffice it to say I no longer enjoy waking up thrashing in the middle of the night as Elmo and his minions haunt me once again with their off-key chorus:

“Grandparents do it! Teeeens do it! Even famous kings and queens do it! You can do it! You’ll use the poooottttyyyyyy!!!”

Engrossed in Elmo's Potty Time

When our on-again, off-again efforts were on again these last few weeks, I started to get hopeful. Yet after all the celebration and jubilation of one step forward (along with a very timely blog entry from my favorite mom blog), that darn brick wall that we can’t get over, under or through emerged once again at the last minute, and futility once again seems to reign. Even as I resorted to Facebook laments and pleas for advice (I really try not to do such things, but thank you, Facebook friends, for the encouragement), the hope was fading fast for our almost-three-year-old, who obviously inherited a double dose of our stubbornness.

Let me be clear about one thing before I go on: though I speak as if I’m the only one stuck in the potty training do-loop, the real credit goes to Peter who took an entire week off of work (hooray for 'use or lose' leave) to work on potty training. And very special credit goes to our Nanny Dearest (she puts Mary Poppins to shame) who has been the one in the house every day of those past 6+ months trying to encourage Miss Bashful—along with her own daughter, who’s the same age—to do their thing.

But alas, it all came to a head this weekend after Peter closed out his week of big-girl-undies shopping and truly valiant efforts. Saturday morning, we picked out the Favorite of the Day (My Little Pony) and put them on. We asked every five minutes if the pee was ready to come out. (No). We got ready to go run errands and asked if the pee needed to come out before we got into the car. (No). We went to Lowe’s. Still no pee. We went to Panera. A very squirmy Marie. Finally after coaxing her the entire lunch hour, she relented to go to the potty with Daddy. 30 minutes of hogging the stall later (and traumatizing an unknown number of men using the urinal as she asked “Daddy, what’s that person doing?”), a defeated Peter and full-bladdered Marie emerged. Bed Bath and Beyond was even worse—after doing the “my bladder is going to explode” dance and shedding many alligator tears she conceded to going in to the women’s room with me, whereupon she had an out-of-body tantrum whenever she heard the sound of someone using the stall next to us. We lasted a good 20 minutes, but I gave up shortly after the final person sitting in the next stall had an unfortunate bout of indigestion, and I attempted to hold my breath in between Marie’s concerned questioning of “Mommy, what’s that sound? Does she have a toot?”

This is Mr. Froggy. Some days we
adore him.
Others we loathe him with
a fiery, fiery passion.

Back at home, Miss Hold-It-At-All Costs still did not want to emit the contents of her bladder prior to nap, so the ever-ingenious Peter (well usually he is!) argued that we shouldn’t put a diaper on during nap because she needed to understand consequences of holding it all day (yes, she has had accidents before and knows what it’s like). He even put Mr. Froggy Potty next to her bed. My response: “No way am I cleaning that up!” But after reassuring me that he would be the one to clean it up and nothing would get ruined, I gave in.

He then scampered off to finish the shopping trip that had been cut short by the potty saga, and naturally had not yet returned when I heard the first tortured strains of “Mommyyy! I’m weettttttt!” coming from the kids’ room. It wasn’t the gallon of pee everywhere that set me off, or even the fact that a key member of our clean-up team was MIA. It was the fact that our little girl was still wearing her nice, new, pretty dress shoes that Daddy hadn’t seen fit to remove at naptime, and the shoes that we had paid good money for were now dripping in pee. Nothing would get ruined, eh? I was miffed. A cranky Erik followed us as I dangled Marie in front of me and ran to the bathtub, and very soon a sheepish Peter returned to meet my wrath. (Poor guy). By the end of bath time, he had apologized a hundred times, started the washer, and allowed me to cool down a bit.  As we stood in the bathroom drying the kids off, I matter-of-factly began to lecture Peter about how My Way is best, but a strange sound stopped me short. I turned to see a completely oblivious Erik emitting a perfectly arcing stream of urine which was bouncing off the kiddie stool and splattering the bathmat. Peter and I both looked at each other in shock and confusion, trying to process what was happening before we burst out laughing. His comment (after telling me that I got what was coming to me): “You have to blog about this.” Happy, my dear?

The fabled shoes drying in the sun after a thorough
rinsing and some Lysol action. We'll
see if they pass the test.

My comment: At the expense of a few loads of laundry and the dress shoes we’re attempting to salvage, I think it’s finally getting through my thick skull that there are plenty of techniques, but no My Way or the Highway when it comes to potty training. Each kid is different. Forcing it too early—or based on an agenda— doesn't necessarily produce results if the environment’s not right. (And yes, I have an agenda: stop paying for at least one set of diapers before the next diaper-clad Hjelmstad arrives). But at the end of the day, we’re no worse off than when we started, and as Peter has so cleverly stated, if all his friends are potty trained then she’ll probably get there soon enough. Simply put, the kid’s going to go when she’s ready. Hopefully before we have to register for kindergarten.

So here’s to flushing the stress of battling with an unwilling subject down the drain, and letting nature take its course when the sweet girl is good and ready.

(But maybe Erik would be willing to start cutting our diaper budget in half…?)