Potty Learning, Take Three

After two previous unsuccessful attempts at potty learning, I decided that this time I wasn't going to wimp out. After all, I have a very intelligent, outspoken, emotionally in-tune daughter who is surely capable of such a simple biological task....right?

When I use the bathroom, she congratulates me in a flurry of jazz hands and insists on getting me a sticker for "going pee-pee in the potty!" And, much to my dismay, she will gladly run over and plop her bare butt down, hand outstretched, requesting the fruit snack that I give her for making a potty attempt. The second that delicious fruit snack hits her mouth, she's up and goes about her play. After doing this three times in a row in the span of half an hour, it slowly dawned on me that maybe I was the one being trained here. Clearly, it is not that my daughter doesn't understand the concept - she merely wants nothing to do with it. And when you think about it, who can really blame her? When you wear a diaper, you can just pee wherever you are. Playing with blocks? No problem! Watching a cartoon? Go ahead! Eating some yogurt? Pee away! Someone will come along and switch you out with a clean one soon enough.

I suppose this shouldn't come as any great shock. She is my daughter, and a redhead to boot, so stubborn independence is just a part of her genetic code. How to overcome it, however, is presenting me with quite a challenge. If I let her wear diapers, she pees in them and I have to change them - she wins. If I let her wear undies, she pees in them and I have to change them - she wins. If she goes naked, she holds it in until her eyeballs start to float and her knees are locked together and only during naptime will she release the floodgate - she wins. Fruit snacks, stickers, treats for trying - win, win, win.

Running water doesn't help, I could set that child's potty chair on the deck of Niagra Falls and she'd hold it in while singing a song titled "I Like Water". Giving her privacy doesn't help, because a nanosecond after I leave the bathroom she is already up and going through the drawers. Her potty chair has just become an overpriced storage bucket, as it currently houses two necklaces and a raisin from lunchtime. She is now pushing the size limits on the cloth diapers she wears, and the next size up disposables are labeled for elderly incontinence use.

It has turned into a battle of wills, and mom is losing. With any luck, we'll get this thing down before she goes to kindergarten - high school, at the latest.