The Girl Who Cried Potty

A few months ago Harlan started showing interest in potty training. She has always been a very vocal little girl and will usually tell me what she wants or needs {I attribute it to teaching her sign language early on.} When she started telling me that she had to go to the bathroom I used it as a cue to buy her a potty and introduce to her how to use it.

She was smitten from the start. She loved the idea of being rewarded from something she had done. Going to the potty was her favorite thing to do. The first couple weeks she would tell me 75% of the time that she had to go. I was amazed! A 15 month old learning to use the potty had me in awe.

Soon her like of the potty turned into love and she would tell me every 15 minutes that she would have to go. I would take her to the potty and she just sat there waiting for something to happen. When nothing did I would take her off and let her go on. Fifteen minutes later we would do it all over again, still with no results. After a couple of days of this I started to call her the girl who cried potty because we would sit on the toilet with nothing happening.

A few weeks later her love for the potty turned out to be more of lust. Little by little she would use the potty less and less. She stopped telling me she had to go and would only tell me after the fact. These past couple of weeks she hasn’t told me at all. We are now back to square one.

My frustration of potty training has led me to attend potty training classes and I was even invited by Leslie and Risa of Big City Moms to talk about Harlan and the potty on Good Morning America with Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Myself and a group of NYC moms talked for an hour about our struggles with potty training and, for some, the pressure of getting into a pre-school without having a child that is fully potty trained. Although my comments didn’t make the segment I was honored to be a part of it and it made me feel so much better about my potty training dilemma. Having moms to talk to that are in similar situations or who have been there before is comforting. Elisabeth even told me that her daughter, Grace, started early as well and wasn’t fully potty trained until around 3.

In reality, Harlan is still very young to start potty training. I am thankful that she now knows what the potty is and what it is used for. When she is ready to use the potty again I will support her and guide her. For now I will try to decipher how to call her bluff when she “cries potty.”

Oh the joys of parenthood.