Three Day Potty Training...My A$$

Here are some information I am not going to be able to provide you in this blog today
1. How to make your kid stop crapping in their pants in 3 days
2. How to make yourself not vomit a little in your mouth as you scrape shit out of  "big boy" underwear
3. How to make potty training a worry free parent/child experience

Let me clarify for you if your not great at reading between the lines...Potty training my son was the SINGLE MOST DIFFICULT THING I HAVE DONE SO FAR AS A PARENT! Granted, I have only been at this for 3 years. I think what got me off to a rough start was erroneous information on the internet like "Potty training made simple" and "How to potty train your toddler in 3 days." These articles really set me up an epic failure. Couple this with a mother (Hi Karen!) that claimed I popped out at birth and immediately asked if I could use the nearest lady's room and other unnamed relatives that would make commentary such as "All my kids were potty trained by 2."  Well good for them. I guess they had some magic shit stick that could shake at there precious little 18 month olds and make them defecate on command or something. Well friends, NOT ME!  

Meet Tripp Bailey. Stubborn as the day is long. I always new it would be hard to potty train him because he never seemed to care that his diaper was dirty from the beginning. As he got older, he never attempted to tell me that he was wet or dirty. He never took off his own diaper in an attempt to change himself. NOTHING, NADA, NO SIGNS OF READINESS, but like the anal retentive, overachieving perfectionist that I am, I decided that we would not be a "late bloomer" in this area.  This kid is mine, I don't late bloom in anything. I eat that sh*t for breakfast. Well not really a good symbolize in a potty post, but you get my drift. 

So at 2, we started pullups. We sat on the potty. We sang potty songs and told potty stories. We watched "Elmos potty time," which by the way is really disturbing from the front seat of a GMC Acadia. Somewhere around age 3, we finally started to attempt to pee in the potty and not just at our leisure in our diaper in between potties. The only way I accomplished this task was to literally take him to the bathroom about once an hour. Mind you, most of the time he would scream that he didn't want to go potty and it would end in a fight. I learned in that year though, that Pull-ups are glorified diapers. Actually, NO, they are worse- more expensive, leak more, and require a full wardrobe change of your kids to get off and on (shoes and all.)

Finally about 1 year in, my husband and I both decided that we were going to have to switch to "big boy underwear." We had put this off for a long time because of the strong desire we both had to never be found scraping feces out of underwear over the toilet, but alas, we did it anyway.  It took another 6 months of trying before we got the pooping consistently in the potty.  

We tried, potty charts, stickers, M&Ms all without any luck. Finally I bought Tripp a high dollar Rescue Bot at the toy store and put it up on a shelf in the bathroom. Everyday we would go in there are look at it and talk about how cool of a toy it was, but then I would tell him he could only have it if he got 10 poop stickers on his chart. (Yes our chart had a poop and a pee side.)
Kind of cruel, I know. Its like dangling a $25 dollar carrot in front of a mule, but it was the only thing that really seemed to get his attention. Important info- do not let them touch the toy. They can talk about it, YOU can touch it...but touching rights only go to those that put there shit in the pot. 

Eventually we got our 10 stickers and earned the Rescue Bot. It took 10 more stickers in a row to buy Tripp his first ever visit to the St Louis Zoo. (Thanks Tripp for waiting until I was 33 weeks pregnant with your sister in July to make that happen buddy!) 

After that we got to start preschool and we only had about 2 more weeks of accidents intermittent until something just hit him that he was going to do it.  

One of his defining moments though, was when his poor Poppa was babysitting him for us in a pinch one day. Tripp and him had "a talk" about using the potty and he thought they were set. Well Tripp has the attention span of a goldfish, so about 10 mins later, he crapped himself for old Pops. The clean up effort (sans Grammy) involved a waterhose...we will just leave it at that. Something about disappointing Poppa really seemed to throw things on course. So note, YOUR KID DOES NOT CARE IF YOU HAVE TO SCRAPE TURDS OUT OF HIS UNDERWEAR. You are his momma (or daddy) and that is part of your job. Other people....well that is cause for concern. 

So there you go. I could write an article and entitle it "How to potty train your kid in 547.5 days, and almost give up at the end and just accept that at some point size 6 diapers are not going to fit your 13 year old." But, ya'll people just keep thinking you can get er done in 3 days and we will see how that works out for ya!