Chief Executive Mom

Visit me at my new website - anniecrawford.com Hooooraaay! I thought the day would never come. I thought I would be the mother to have a 5 year old still in diapers. It felt like my greatest failure in parenting; my three year old refused to go potty. Her little friend who is 10 days apart in age started potty training right before she turned two. I thought, Elise is as smart as she is, she can potty train too. Never mind that we were about to have a new baby in a few weeks. So I tried and we both got frustrated when she wet all over, over and over again. So I gave up. Periodically I would try to get her to use the potty but she usually threw a minor tantrum about it, so I would let it go. So I felt that I had both pushed her two early and then for a year not tried hard enough or creatively enough to work through it. A vetran mom or two told me to forget about it. When she was ready, we would know and it would be easy. Don't worry, they told me, she won't be five and still in diapers.

I actually did get over it and kind of made a joke out of it. Oh well that the rest of her Sunday school class seemed to be potty training. We would glory in the simplicity of diapers. I didn't envy the fretting mothers running to the potty or pulling over on the side of the road.

This summer, in our little kiddy pool, I started trying to get Elise not to go in the water. She seemed to get it right away. I made it seem gross to pee in the water and told her she could just go in the grass. She seemed to get the gross part and going in the grass seemed easy and novel, so she was pretty much insta-pool trained. This of course proved a little awkward at the public pool when she would spontaneously run over to the side of the pool and squat and pee. Once she did more than pee . . .

Obviously she was now able to tell when she needed to go to the bathroom, and able to hold it long enough to get out of the pool. I began asking her if she would like to wear "comfy big girl underwear" in the morning or a baby diaper. She usually wanted a diaper or occasionally she would want underwear but would tantrum when I asked her to go potty (it seemed to be inconvenient to her and disturb her play too much) and then when she had an accident, she would seem embarrassed and frustrated and want a diaper (she is a perfectionist like her mother).

Four days ago she started asking for underwear in the morning and she stopped throwing a tantrum when I asked her to go to the potty. The last two days she has worn them all through the day. Yesterday she made it through her nap dry. When we were going to drive 30 min. to the store we told her that she needed to wear a diaper. She said, "Mom, big girls like me don't wear diapers. Diapers are for babies." And she made it to the store and back. Hooray! So if your child is being difficult to potty train, don't worry, when she is ready, it will happen and it will be a lot easier. :-)