Metal Meredith

I never thought it would happen. I remember reading about a friend, her day of hell potty training her 4 year old and hoped and hoped we would never have to do that.

For those of you not close enough to us, Vivienne STILL will not poop in the toilet. Each time, she asks for a pull up or goes and gets one herself. When she is done, she comes and tell us, gets wipes and a plastic bag and brings them to us to clean her up. We have tried every single thing you can think of to get her to change. Bribery, arguing, begging and even guilt and praise doesn’t work. 

Last week, Phil asked me what else we can do to get her to go because he was fed up with it (mind you, he changes only 2 of her poop diapers a week, if that). I talked to her on Friday about what we could do to make her more comfortable. She was rational and asked to try to go on the toilet. She sat there for 20 minutes, whining and complaining but being too stubborn to, well, shit or get off the pot. Finally I had to force her to go get a diaper instead of sitting there trying her best not to poop while attempting to convince me she was trying.

I did one more sweep of the internet search engines and came up with nothing new. As a last resort, I popped onto the Babycenter Toilet Training board and read a thread of other people having this same problem. After reading those, I decided that it wasn’t Vivienne’s problem, it was mine. The worst being the stigma of having a 4 yr old not able to be potty trained, the embarrassment of telling grandparents and in laws that they have to change her diaper if she spends more than one night with them. But again, my problem, not hers.

So I let it go. I told Phil to let it go. I took a deep breath and walked away. She will do it when she is ready. She knows we are ready.

She has not asked to try on the toilet again. She tells me about a far away time and place called “when I poop on the potty” where there are unicorns and rainbows, everyone eats at Chuck E Cheese all the time and gets all the toys they ask for. Where she is a princess and when she sits on the toilet, angels sing and bluebirds bring her glitter filled pieces of toilet paper. It sounds so nice, even I want to go there.

I am waving the white flag...or maybe a pole with a diaper on it.