Hi! I haven’t written a thing for six months, oops.  I owe my silence to a particularly busy spring and summer which included a family trip to New Zealand, a solo yoga retreat, training for and running a marathon, completing a big curriculum project for work, not to mention various weekend adventures to hot springs, the beach, camping with queers(!) and lots of time laying by the pool.  Here are a few snaps of our adventures.

 

So what’s up on the kid front?  Well, we started potty training two months ago.  I’ve been asked by many why we decided to jettison the diapers at 22 months.  For one, we were cloth diapering and I. was. done. washing smelly, poopy diapers 2-3x/week.  Don’t get me wrong, I really liked using cloth but at some point one is ready to move on.  The second reason as I began reading about the process, is that waiting to potty train kids until they are 3 or older is actually a new phenomenon that is highly correlated to the growth of the disposable diaper industry.  Are we surprised?  We also had several friends who potty trained their kids by age 2 so it felt achievable and we went for it.  Oh my.

It has been terrible.  It has been terrible because I realized that I may have some issues with control (friends, stop snickering, please).  It’s truly amazing how blind we can be to our own ways of being in the world.  I’m not controlling about everything in my life, and I can come off as rather laid back (I think) as I am a pleaser with a desire to go with the flow.  However, it is apparent that when I really want something to happen, I expect to be able to see it through on my own terms.  The problem is that with potty training, my own terms = The Beast’s terms. In my most objective and grounded moments I can see what a blessing it is to have a child who is a crystal clear mirror.  It’s not the pee on the floor that is the primary problem for me, it’s that I have found it inordinately challenging to surrender to the fact that my child is a sentient being who does what she wants (i.e. poop in her play tent), despite my best efforts at strictly implementing a potty training method.  A similar challenge arose for me around sleep training (which we weren’t able to do very successfully either, the topic of another post) so I thought for sure I’d be better this time.  Guess again.

Potty training has been a two-month battle of The Beast trying to pee and poop anywhere BUT the potty, while I run (literally all-out sprint) after her trying desperately to redirect said evacuations to a toilet instead.  What I have learned is that you can’t actually MAKE a toddler potty train.  You need at least a little bit of buy-in.  Something we still don’t totally have.

We chose to follow the popular “commando” approach where you strip your child naked and don’t leave the house for three days while trying to recognize the “signs” of your child needing to poop or pee and then trying to catch what you can in a tiny potty.  This basically meant that Mrs S and I obsessed over our child’s every movement for three days and literally only talked debated whether the squat was a pee squat or a play squat.  We bought and read Oh Crap as our guide upon the recommendation of a few friends.  The book was fine, I give it 2.5 stars on the Queer Tribe book rating scale. Even after reading the book, which informed me that potty training wasn’t for the faint of heart, I thought to myself, oh it can’t be that bad, I house-trained our dog in a week with this basic approach.  The one difference is that The Beast is not a submissive, food motivated dog.

It became clear very quickly what a messy affair this would be.  After day 1, there was pee everywhere (on the couch, on the floor, behind the bed etc.). The Beast was also initially terrified of pooping in the potty (common, we read) so she didn’t poop for the first three days. Then on day 4, while my back was turned for a brief moment (rookie move) she pooped all over the deck, which the dog then proceeded to eat.  Gross.  Also, not leaving the house for 4 days is challenging. We built a lot of towers from blocks, read a lot of books, painted our toenails and even tried to make sauerkraut. The last one was a bad idea.  Turns out chopping 4 heads of cabbage is not a toddlers idea of a good time.  (As a side note, baking with toddlers is a good idea, try simple vegan recipes so they can taste the batter – feeding my toddler post forthcoming).

By day 5-ish things seemed to get better.  The Beast would happily tell us when she needed to go, though she had a few accidents, these were to be expected.  Then on day 7 something went terribly wrong that was not planned, she started teething. This resulted in a generally discontent child who screamed any time we tried to put her on the potty.  She even pooped in the bath, something she hasn’t done since she was 6 months old.  It was at this point that I considered quitting parenting.  Like, I actually fantasized how it might be possible.  Oh how I was ready to be done. I felt like no matter what I did, I had no way of controlling the situation (this is particularly terrible for people who like to control situations).  I was inordinately dysregulated through most of this period, being short of patience for just about anything that The Beast (or anyone else in my life) did.  I felt myself getting angrier and angrier, having outsized emotional responses to accidents and and increasingly trying to control the potty training process.  These were not my proudest moments as a parent.  Fortunately for all parties, I wasn’t doing this alone.  My amazing wife suggested that maybe it was OK if The Beast had an accident (wait, what?).  Or that maybe I needed to give The Beast a little more trust and independence.  Without the desire for a particular outcome, the resistance becomes less necessary, right? This sounds amazing in theory and I really do try to keep this concept of “relaxing the fist,” top of mind.

The teething stopped, and it’s gotten a little easier.  She poops exclusively in the potty (yay!) and we have gone several days this week without an accident.  However on the flip side, The Beast still screams and resists sitting on the potty when she wakes up in the morning, after nap and other random times. I still have to use all of my mental strength to take deep breaths and stay grounded when she refuses to pee in the potty and then turns around and pees in her pants on the playground 30 seconds later.

The only way I’ve survived this ordeal is by defering to my wife’s endless well of patience and enviable ability to surrender to the process, regardless of the challenges that The Beasts presents us.  I feel so blessed that I don’t have to do this (or any other part of parenting) alone.  On that note, I must take a moment to give a deep bow to my mother, and all the other single parents out there who had to potty train, or tackle any other parenting endeavor, without the support of a fully present partner.  This stuff isn’t easy and doing it with a partner makes it so much more tolerable for everyone. There is no doubt that I am a better mother and better person because of my wife.  I am not cured of my controlling and rigid tendencies, but I’m more aware of them which is a start! Next stop, practicing that surrender to what my sweet angel/devil child will throw at me next.

Final Note: I really have no wisdom to share about potty training.  It’s terrible. It’s messy.  It doesn’t feel like we’ve done it very successfully.  Good luck people.