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It all goes “haywire”! We are perking right along in the Potty Training category and have pretty much gotten the “when we’re at home we wear panties and go potty on the potty seat” behavior down. We were talking about and just about to start working on the “if you have to go potty during Quiet Play Time/Nap Time, get up outta bed and get to the potty” behavior (she still wears a training pant at nap and bed). I’m feelin’ good. Yes, it has cost me lots of stickers and a few bucks spent in the Target dollar aisle but no worries.

Until Princess Tater Tot and I are in the office/sewing room/play room and I hear a steady stream of, you guessed it: PEE ON MY CARPET. Par for the course with potty training but it’s been almost a week since she’s done that and I had thought that the rewards and feeling like a Big Girl were motivating her to get to the potty. So, without thinking, I say frantically “Stop. Stop. Stop” meaning “Try and stop the pee from coming and get to the potty seat to finish.” But it didn’t come out that way. Obviously. And, according to what I’ve read, saying anything except “Oh, I’ll clean that up.” or some other such neutral statement was not the way to go.

Up until now I have been really, really good at making those non-committal, neutral, not-losing-your-sh*t statements when she “has an accident”. So I was disappointed in myself yesterday. Until I asked her why she peed on the carpet. “I didn’t feel like going to the potty seat.” was the answer. What?! Didn’t FEEL like it? It wasn’t an accident? Oh, Good Lord how I had to bite my tongue, mumbling to myself out of earshot and talking to God so I didn’t lose it. I cleaned up the pee and did something else “busy” for a minute to keep my composure thinking all the while “What exactly am I supposed to do with the ‘I peed on the carpet on purpose’ situation?” Let it go? Not react? NOT COOL. She saw through my busy behavior and getting out of earshot and said “When you pee on the carpet, it makes Mommy mad.” I assured her that I wasn’t mad and said something else that I cannot exactly recall about how I was feeling about the situation. From what I do recall, I probably stretched the truth pretty thin to maintain the neutral stance I felt I was supposed to take.

I did end up letting it go because I didn’t want to do something that could potentially derail Tater Tot’s motivation for potty training but, with a few hours and a little bit of perspective, I now have a plan for it if this becomes a pattern. I am not deluding myself that this is the last time she will “not feel like it”. Firstly, when she pees somewhere other than the potty, she will help me clean it up. Secondly, whatever room we are in and whatever activity we are doing will have to be stopped, using the excuse that I don’t want her around the stuff I spray on the carpet. We have to wait for it to dry. It could irritate her skin. All done in a neutral way, of course. Neutrally done, but a loss just the same.

Unfortunately, that was just the start of the downhill slide to our day. It had happened at around 3:30 and from then until bed time things just were wonky. Bed time is a whole other story. There were tears. There was outrageous stalling behavior. And then there were the power struggles. The analytical side of me is thinking “Self: it’s time to start looking at what her controlling behavior is all about”. And then I think “She’s three. She gets poked at least 8 times a day. She has to get used to stopping what she’s enjoying to go to the potty seat.” If someone was messing with my world like that, I might pee on the carpet, too. Ok, well, probably not, but you get the idea. And then maybe she just had a bad couple of hours. I wonder how it’ll go today…wish me luck!