Another false start

We went through a pack of Easy Ups this week, but are no closer to potty training the toddler than we were in February when I bought her the Winnie the Pooh toilet ("Oh boy! Pooh and Pligget!").

I thought she was ready. I thought she's been ready for months, but I've been too preoccupied or lazy or daunted to follow through: She's extremely verbal; she has words to describe her various bodily functions and has (sporadically) anticipated them before they happened. She understands and can follow directions. We all know she knows how to take off her clothes.

We've had a few false starts since the introduction of her personal potty. She lost interest in the thing a few days after I brought it home, and I didn't want to push her. She'd only just barely turned 2.

Later in the spring I bought a few packs of real underwear -- pink and purple cotton panties with hearts and balloons -- sure that she'd be thrilled to leave her diapers for these. Turns out she didn't really care, and I had little interest in changing wet panties (or worse) several times a day.

Summer, people told me, is the perfect time to potty train because they can run around the house naked all day. Frankly, since I live in a house equipped with both heat and air conditioning, I'm not sure why the season matters -- but I felt grateful for an excuse to put it off again.

And now here it is, with summer half over and the toddler closer to 3 than to 2 (by like a week, lol, but still) and I feel like I'm completely derelict in my potty training duty. We need to figure this out.

I made a chart last Sunday -- crayon on cardstock; nothing fancy -- and told her she could put a Sesame Street sticker on it any time she went wet or poopy in her toilet. On Monday we broke out the Easy Ups, the training pants with the style of underwear and the ease of a diaper! I tried to force Koolaid on her all day long, an unheard of treat for a girl who's only allowed milk and water, but she didn't want any. We made frequent trips to the bathroom but nothing happened. Or rather, things happened, but they happened in her Easy Ups in between the trips to practice on the toilet. (And let me tell you, when it's poop, Easy Ups are absolutely not as easy as diapers. Blegh.) Whether deliberately or by accident, our timing was always off.

Wednesday afternoon, already frustrated with the direction of this little experiment and eager to inspire her, I let her put an Elmo sticker on the chart for passing gas in the vicinity of the Pooh potty. Hey, it was something.

It's now late Friday night and Elmo is all alone, smiling his happy vacant smile, waiting in vain for other stickers to join him.

The Easy Ups ran out today and we bought diapers to replace them.

*SIGH!*

I thought she was ready, but now I'm not sure: She doesn't seem to have any particular interest in staying fresh and clean; she doesn't mind walking around with her pants full of poop. I've read that being able to dress herself is a potty training prerequisite, and while she can tear those clothes off like a champ, she has a lot of trouble putting them on. I can work with her on that, but in the meantime.... Is it worth the stress this is causing between us? Can we take a break and try again later?

Oh! And speaking of stress! She has to be coerced into sitting on the toilet most of the day, but tell her it's time for a nap (or time to clean up, or time for *insert undesirable activity here*) and suddenly she has an urgent need. An urgent need that -- as evidenced by the emptiness of the chart -- never seems to pan out. Miiiiighty suspicious, I say. But what am I supposed to tell her? "No, you may not use the potty!" Argh.

What am I supposed to do? Soldier on despite her complete lack of interest? Put it off again until later? I worry that these starts and stops sap whatever potty credibility I had to start with (and I worry that I'm now the sort of person who writes long treatises discussing "potty credibility").

I want this to be a positive learning experience for her, but as the week wore on I found myself snapping at the slightest provocation: "Don't you touch that handle! You don't get to flush unless you actually get something in the toilet. Hands off. HANDS OFF." (Picture her with an evil grin, her hand hovering over the flusher, flinching occasionally to goad me.) If we try again later, when she's ready -- when she wants to learn -- won't it be more positive for all of us?

But she's 2-1/2 already; it's getting late. Please, someone, reassure me that she won't still be in diapers at age 15.


~RCH~