Last night, shortly after putting the kids to bed, I sat on the couch and cried. Some tears were tears of joy, while others were tears of sadness. Just an hour before, Macks called me up to his room and told me he had to use the potty. We’ve been in the potty training process for about a month now and he’s finally starting to get it. But we’ve hit a few obstacles along the way. One being (for lack of a better word) poop. He won’t go. Not in the potty, not in his Pampers Easy Ups training underwear. He will just hold it in until he’s absolutely miserable. Which then makes us both miserable. But last night something must have clicked. He called me up, told me he had to poop, went to the potty and went. It was as easy as that. We did our little excited potty dance and headed off to bed, like this was something that was part of his daily routine (which I assure you it is not.)
I didn’t lose it until after he went to bed. Because I was happy for him. Elated that we were making it over this hump, yet filled with so much sadness that we were closing yet another chapter in our lives. Yet another step towards more independence. We’re closing this baby stage in our family and moving forward as a family with three “kids.” It’s a hard pill to swallow when you realize your youngest baby isn’t such a baby anymore.
Macks has always been one to do things on his own time. He wants to do things his way. There’s no reasoning with him. He was my first child that went past his due date. He was the one that took the longest to sleep train. And alas, he’s the one that’s taking the longest to potty train.
The girls were easy to potty train. As soon as I put them in preschool, they’d see their classmates using the potty and within weeks, we were out of diapers. Avery was potty trained both during the day and through the night within a month. It felt like I didn’t even have to try, it was so easy.
And then it came time for Macks to use the potty and it wasn’t even close to how the girls were. Once again, Macks assured me that he wanted to do it on his own time. So learning from his cues, I decided, we’d just wait for him when he was ready.
Rather than pushing it and asking him to try to use the potty, I just let him be. We started using Pampers Easy Ups Training Underwear, but I didn’t even make a big deal about them. He loved that he could wear something with Thomas the Train on them, but I didn’t harp to him on the fact that that looked like big boy underwear or they were easy to pull up and down like underwear. Thank goodness that they were ultra-absorbent because we needed that extra protection with the way he was using them. And he used them for months.
He was one of the only ones in his class that still wasn’t potty trained and yet he was fine with it and I was too. I remember speaking with his pediatrician at his three year appointment and the doctor assured me that it would come. He said, let him be and eventually he would turn the corner. He didn’t give me any tricks or three-day methods to get him over the hump. His only suggestion was to give him the time that he needs.
And that was the best advice I could have ever been given. Because it worked. Macks didn’t need any special methods to help him use the potty. All of the tricks that I’d used with the girls were completely useless to him. Because in true Macks fashion, Macks had to do it his way in his time.
So if you’ve got a “Macks” in your house, just let them do it their way and in their time. Because eventually it will happen. And you’ll think to yourself, the timing couldn’t be better.
Pampers Easy Ups Training Underwear won the 2017 Best New Product Award. Easy Ups look, fit, and feel like real underwear while providing the outstanding leak protection you’d expect from Pampers. Your little ones will think it’s underwear, but you’ll know it’s Pampers.
