'Nooooooo!' I whined in hope my pitiful face might change her mind.
Miss A had decided it was time to toilet train. Which would be great if you weren't 'toilettrainingaphobic' after your last child went through it!!! Yes I did just coin the term toilettrainingaphobic, there's no other way to describe it. Thinking of taking another child out in public, nappy free, after miss M and the debarkles that came with her milestone, makes me want to spoon my eyeballs out onto a plate and eat them!! (Yeah sorry, a bit gross but you get my point!). So here we sit in a Mexican standoff where I put the nappies on and Miss A pulls them off again wanting to do 'wee'.
Miss M was about 19 months old when she showed her first signs of wanting to toilet train. It was exciting given that miss H had been a dream to toilet train and there had also been 8 and a half years between children so I couldn't claim to be sick of it by any means!! The only problem was that miss A was due to be born in less than a month and the idea of toilet training and having a new born did not sound like it would work out well! So I did what anyone clinging to her sanity would do and held her off. I kept putting nappies on her and resisted the urge to buy a potty. This would have to wait.
Once Miss M was a bit older it was time. Initially things went like a dream. We bought a potty and she took to it like a duck to water. Wee's initially and then poos soon to follow. She was that quick at picking it up that's she soon followed on to having dry nappies at night so in disbelief, I got rid of them too! So here I was with a 2 year old completely day AND night trained and pretty damn proud of myself. Now those of you who know of Miss M and her antics you will know that she is the 'challenging' child so in hind sight I should have known that it was the calm before the storm.
After about one month of smooth sailing the novelty wore off. Miss M was well and truly over toilet training. She started having 'accidents' more frequently and appeared quite triumphant when it happened. She would sneak off into a corner and wee and then come in smirking at me showing me the wet patch on her pants. 'Ok.' I thought 'I've heard of this happening, ill just have to take a step back' so I went back to reoffering the toilet. Unfortuntunately, the answer was ALWAYS 'no!'. It didn't matter if she was dancing the Irish jig in the corner if I said 'do you need to do wee?' She would always say no and then a few minutes later would pee in her pants! As frustrating as this was we persevered and instead of getting better, things got worse!! Miss M went back to night time wetting four out of five nights a week and me, while I became a sobbing mess in a pile of piddly washing. This went on for about a month and as much as people say 'stick with it', I chose my sanity and I put miss M back in night nappies so we could focus on the daytime again.
It was then that the worst part happened, miss M became a sneaky pooer. She would sneak off into the corner and reappear with a smirk. When asked what she was doing he would then turn around facing away from me showing the obvious 'finger like' projection showing in the rear if her pants. It's was awful!!! It didn't matter how much I caught her 'popping' and then made her sit on the toilet, she would then manage to keep the lid on it until after she got off the loo and after I had let my guard down. With the accidents came the funny stories like miss M letting us know that she had 'shit eberywhere' in her pants. Or the time that it rolled out th cuff of her pants. But most of it was stress, anguish and frustration.
What did we do you ask? I read all the google search literature i could, i asked other people, i cried, a screamed but in the end we went with what instinct told us. Miss M was our child and if anyone was going to work her out, it was us, not google. We started from scratch. We pretended like miss M knew nothing about toilet training and started from scratch. I must admit to using food as a reward initially (which I don't really like to do) but desperate times call for desperate measures. And I was DESPERATE! I felt like I couldn't go anywhere. She was pooing herself on a daily basis and was proud as punch about it too! We started with some small jube lollies saying she could have one each time she did wee on the toilet. This then progressed to each time she pooed on the toilet. It then became an ink stamp on the hand each time. This then progressed to a stamp on the calendar for each accident free day and a surprise after the week was accident free, eventually phasing out the rewards and replacing it with 'good job! You're a big girl now!'. Looking back it was so stressful and exhausting and in hindsight it was partly attention seeking behaviour mixed in with a bit of miss M being miss M and not doing anything on command unless it suited her.
So now here we are with toilettrainophobia and an obviously 'keen to progress' almost two year old and a terrible case of déjà vu. I am being lead by miss A at this point but I am certainly not biting the bullet just yet. She is getting a potty time elmo for her 2nd birthday so that should keep her happy for a while but I'm not rushing her and I'm not being rushed. Over the need to jump to the next milestone, I choose life and mental stability!!!
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