Potty-Training Tales

As soon as my bright, precocious, and happy one-year-old daughter had her first birthday party, I plopped her on the most deluxe potty-chair I could find. I was more than confident that her training would be a breeze. However, she had other plans. For the next few years, she clearly articulated precisely how she felt about my unrelenting efforts to get her toilet training completed.

Here’s What Happened

As a toddler, my daughter’s overall development was very advanced. She surpassed verbal and physical milestones compared to her little peers. She began speaking audible words at 10 months old and she spent little time crawling. One day my toddler stood up, crept around furniture, and began walking independently when she was also10 months old. So, it came to me as a complete shock that my bright toddler had no interest in learning about self-toileting when I thought she should have been.

When she was around 18 months old, I simply asked her why she would not use her potty-chair. As she waved her tiny little hand in my direction as if to dismiss the possibility of becoming more independent, this was her surprising response to me in her cute and tiny voice:

“I don’t have time to use the potty”.

At the age of two, my young child easily expressed herself in complete sentences to let me know that she had more important things to do than use her potty-chair. After all, there were her favorite television programs to watch like “Teletubbies”, “ Wow Wow Wubbzy”, and “Barney”, her fun toys to play with, and lots of running, jumping, and hopping to do. (And she learned to do those physical activities well at a young age and began her journey as a gymnast, too.)

Even though my little girl hated wearing diapers and pullups, she was not motivated to do what big girls did. She did a lot of complaining about what she needed to continue to wear. I once remember my daughter exclaiming out of exasperation

“this diaper is soakin' wet!”

She was still around two years old at that time. I couldn’t believe that she was upset about feeling the discomfort of a wet diaper but still made no attempt to become toilet-trained.

My daughter’s complaints about not being ready and able to consistently wear brightly colored and fun big girl undergarments reached an all-time high. She often and boldly protested

“I have a wedgie”

whenever she wore a bulky diaper or pullup. She complained to me that these things always gave her a wedgie.

As a former child-development teacher and educator, I thought I did everything thing according to best practices and research related to toilet-training my daughter. In addition to letting her wear kid-friendly regular underwear, I used other techniques, too. For example, I developed a schedule for her toileting and celebrated any success that she had used her potty-chair. Sadly, nothing I tried worked.

One Day Something Miraculous Happened

Without fanfare or any other pleasant warning, my daughter became interested in consistently learning about becoming toilet trained. My initial thoughts were that she was just tired of being “soakin' wet” and having “wedgies” from her diapers and pullups. I also assumed that my daughter finally found the time to use her potty-chair.

But, there was much more to these initial thoughts.

It was as though a switch turned on inside her little body. When my daughter was three years old, she was finally ready to become a big girl.

One Final Thought

As a parent, I learned some valuable lessons throughout the time that I spent toilet-training my daughter.

Looking back, she was too young to begin the process when I presumed she was ready. I mistakenly believed the time that I began training her was the right time for her because she was very intelligent and kinesthetically advanced for her age.

I now realize that I put far too much pressure on my daughter by overstimulating her with all the potty-training accessories and research-based strategies that I used when she was not ready.

The moral of my story is quite simple.

Each child is a unique being. Each one develops at an individualized pace. That means that they will make specific developmental strides in key areas of their lives when they are ready.

My daughter was fully toilet-trained on her terms. When the time was right for her, she mastered it. And it did not take a long time.

My daughter said some funny things as she was in no rush to become a big girl. I learned some important things, too.

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This story was originally published on Medium.com in A Parent Is Born.