POTTY TRAIN FAIL: AGAIN

I feel like potty training my children must be intended by God for my own personal sanctification.  It has certainly turned out that way so far.  Bella has been showing all the normal signs of readiness to potty train.  After all the drama that it was to potty train Lily (I started last spring break with her), I was not exactly chomping at the bit to get this going, but I figured that it could not be worse than last time.

I was wrong.

On Sunday night, we told Bella that we were going to teach her to be a big girl the next day and that it would be very fun.  She seemed excited, and she ran and got her little potty and sat on it.  John and I remarked on how different it was going to be this time.

We were wrong.

I had a feeling it was not going to go well that morning, and that feeling proved itself to be true in almost every way the rest of the day.  There was something in her eyes that read, "Good luck, Mom.  I am not in this with you."  I made a valiant effort, and for a few moments of the day, so did she.

I threw in the towel late in the afternoon when I had offered Bella the option of wearing big-girl undies, a pull-up or a diaper.  She was lobbying hard for a swim diaper with "NEMO!", which was not an option.  And then she had an accident in the middle of it all.  I was angry and at the end of me.

And this time around, I know a few more things.

1)  I know that one day, probably not one day real soon, but one day, Bella will be potty-trained.  It will happen.
2)  If she is not ready, I am not going to force her.  The child has to be motivated by something other than candy - she has to want it.  And right now, though many signs indicated that Bella might want it, she doesn't really.
3)  I am not going to turn this into a battle.  We already have plenty of those.

So, we may try again in a few months.  Or, if she gets very excited and decides to drive the process, I might be persuaded to do it again sooner.  But I am not going to spend fruitless, tedious days trying to do something that is not working.

As I have noted, I believe that potty training is always teaching me something.  This time around I am realizing what a good thing it actually is that my children don't do things the easy way.  If they did, I would be very tempted to think I was a good parent and that the stuff I did worked.  I would have shaken my heads at other moms when things were hard and thought they just weren't doing the right stuff.  I wouldn't have understood how hard it really could be to parent a kid with their own sense of how things should be.  I would have thought that parent just wasn't trying hard enough.

God saved me from all of that.  There are other temptations I fall into, but I no longer think there is a perfect solution that will work for every family and every kid and that everyone should be doing that.  God has us all on different paths for our benefit and our children's.  I'm thankful for the one that we are on, even though I didn't necessarily feel that way by 4 p.m. yesterday.



And, I'm thankful for this sweet girl.  She has a mind of her own, and I am looking forward to seeing the ways that God uses her.  I'm praying he gets ahold of her early.