Dear Potty Training Mama,

You’re ready.

At least, you think you are.

You’ve got your sticker chart, your dog-eared library copy of Oh Crap!: Potty Training, your sense of grit and firm resolution hardening your lips into a stern line.  A box of Franzia from CVS.

You know nothing, Potty Training Mama.  

You think you know of boredom, but you have not known boredom until you sit in a room waiting for a child to pee.  

You think you know patience, but you have not known patience until you have given your child three juice boxes (three!) in the past hour, and yet they say blithely they do not have to pee.

You think you know frustration, but you have not known frustration until, on the second full day of sitting around waiting and finally, FINALLY, when your child has to pee, he goes…sprinting into the corner of the bedroom.

You think you know of desperation, but you have not known desperation until you plant your child on the toilet and begin, against all the sage advice you carefully absorbed prior to the appointed days, to give your child fruitless ultimatums and then, finally, bribes.

But fear not.  

It’s going to get easier.  Not right away, of course. But it will.  Soon (so, so soon!) you’re going to be free of those diapers, and this mind-melting tedium will be over, as will the seething consternation as you haul the learning child you’ve been watching like an over-eager bird watcher to the bathroom, knowing there’s a trail of pee you’re going to have to dejectedly clean up in a few minutes.  

And if your better time seems slow to arrive, here’s the other thing: it’s okay to throw in the towel (literally, if you’ve been cleaning up pee dribbles!).  Nobody is going to come knocking at your door saying you’ve failed as a parent because the first round of potty training didn’t yield results. I have friends who speak of Oh Crap!: Potty Training with the reverence of a religious text and they, its loyal disciples.  But the truth is, it was a combination of methods that ended up working for my family, and not all of them were in that book. It’s the same way for any child-rearing path, really. For every super successful method that works for 75% of one’s mom group, there’s always going to be that outlying 25% remaining…and you might be part of it.  And that’s okay. There are so many differences between kids; neurological differences (a neurotypical child may have a different potty training journey from a neurodiverse child), experiential differences (a child who’s been through trauma may have a different potty training journey), temperamental differences (‘nuff said).

You’ll get there.  Whatever path you’re on will, I doubt, be infinite.  It may be long and winding and there might be some toilet paper stuck on your shoe, but you’ll get there.

In the meantime though, pass the Franzia.

Love,

A Mama Who’s Been There