I’m currently in the trenches, potty training my second child. We’ve all heard the same advice from other moms: be patient, wait until they’re ready, be consistent, stick with it, and on and on. And, no, we don’t want to hear about how you potty-trained your child in two hours flat.
Sure, some kids are more excited about being a big boy or big girl than others. And some kids (like a little boy I gave birth to who shall remain nameless) just didn’t care if he ran around the playground in dirty pants for half an hour. At the age of 4.
But, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m the one to blame for my potty training failures. Potty training is a two-way street. You both need to be ready. You both need to be focused. But, that’s the problem. The focus part. I cannot sit still and focus on JUST ONE thing anymore.
I don’t know when this happened – I’m pretty sure I was able to study for hours at a time during law school. I could concentrate for days during meetings with clients. But, since I’ve become a mom my mind is all over the place.
I struggle with getting that load of laundry taken care of. I keep forgetting to send out that work email that’s been in draft mode on my desktop for two days. And don’t even ask me if I’m ever out the door on time each morning with all children, backpacks, lunch boxes, and shoes. (Yeah, I might have tried to drop my daughter off at school without shoes last week). But boy do I see horrendous (and messy) outcomes when I isolate my focusing issues with my potty training experiences.
To illustrate the conflict, I’m going to highlight a 15-minute snippet from last week.
10:40 am Friday Morning
My Apple Watch’s 20-minute timer goes off (which I reset for another 20 minutes because I’m so on top of this potty training thing), and I run downstairs to the playroom to remind my daughter it’s time to potty. She runs to her little potty that we’ve brought into the playroom to ease this process. She sits down and nothing happens. My phone rings from upstairs and I tell her to try a little bit longer and I’ll be right back.
This is where it all went downhill.
My Story
I race up the stairs to answer the phone. It’s my mom calling to check in about how the potty training is going. We chat a few minutes. As we’re chatting I’ve walked into the kitchen to discover the tornado that somehow wrecked havoc in my kitchen this morning. I gather up various sippy cups, empty Gogurt packages, and clear plates with food. I wipe up the crumbs all over the table and counters. Ugghh, it looks like the kids purposefully spread crumbs all over the floor. I hang up with Mom. I grab the vacuum to just vacuum the kitchen. Well, the living room floors need a quick vacuum as well. Geez, look at the plants on the patio. I need to water them before I forget. Gross – when was the last time we swept the patio. I should do that while I’m out here. Okay, let’s take the vacuum back to the garage. That reminds me, I need to change over the laundry. Uggh, the clothes in the dryer are still damp so I need to reset that one again. Did I feed the cats yet? I can’t remember. I’ll go ahead and feed them. Yeah, they need fresh water too. This is the last of their dry cat food so I need to add that to my Groceries list in my Wunderlist app. Now that I’m thinking about it, do we need more milk? What does our fresh fruit and veggie stash look like in the fridge … Beep beep beep. Okay, I better head downstairs. I’m so on top of this potty-training thing. “Parker, it’s time to potty again.”
Her Story
Mommy runs up the stairs. I think I need to poop. Yay! I did it. Where’s Mommy? What do I do now? I know! Mommy always cleans up after I potty. I’ll carry the bucket with my poop in it to the bathroom. Hmmm. How does mommy get it into the potty. I guess this will work. Oops. It fell on the floor. I’ll just pick it up and put it in the potty. I should probably go ahead and pull off a bunch of this toilet paper to put in the potty with the poop too. Yep, that looks great. Oh no, I just stepped on the spot where the poop fell on the mat earlier. Wipe my foot on the mat. Wipe my foot on the tile floor. It’s mostly off my foot now. Good. I want to play!!! I run back to the playroom. There are my blocks. I want to build a house for my dinosaurs. Play play play. My bottom is sticky. I wonder what’s making it feel like that? Oh, when I touched my bottom I got poop on my hands. Yucky. I’ll just wipe it off on the carpet here. Oh no, that made a mess. I need to clean it up. There’s the paper towels and the spray Mommy uses. Wow – Mommy never leaves the spray close enough for me reach. I think I should put a bunch of paper towels all over the brown messes I see on the carpet. I love unrolling the paper towel roll. Look how long it is! Okay, now I’m going to just rub it in over the brown areas. That’s better. Should I try to spray this on them? Yeah, so much better. Wait, is Brother watching tv? What is he watching? I want to sit up there on the couch with him. My bottom is still itchy. Hmmm. This show is funny. Beep beep beep. There’s the potty alarm! And look, there’s Mommy!
And, end scene.
Okay, that was a fun blog post! Now, what was I supposed to be doing? Oh yeah, I need to call that client back and update this month’s Amazon Subscribe & Save and get to the grocery store before 12 so I can pick the kids up by ….
