Secret Motherhood Confession: I Am a Potty Training Failure

I have a confession to make, I hate potty training. I mean I really truly detest it. And I feel like I rather suck at it to boot. My daughter is almost three and a half and potty training is still a work in progress. I don’t even want to admit that publicly, that my three year old is still wearing Easy Ups.  It’s embarrassing. I feel like she will never master the potty and it makes me feel like I am failing at this whole mom thing.

I remember having a hard time potty training with her older sister, but at that time I also had an excellent excuse. I was pregnant, and I was having a rough pregnancy, one where I was feeling lousy the majority of the time. Then I had a new born babe on my hands, and all the lack of sleep and preoccupation that implies. My potty training attempts were half-hearted at best. The way I remember it, I had relatives freaking out that my daughter was almost three and still not potty trained. Then things fell into place and she picked it up by her third birthday.

So yeah, ok, maybe with girl #1 I had a solid excuse. But what’s my excuse this time around? Total mom failure? Or is it just that I have the most stubborn and hard-headed three year old ever?

You know what made me feel better? A little while ago I found this kicking around in my draft posts folder, and then a few days ago I happened upon an old journal entry I had written which talked about how girl #1 was driving me bats with her failure to potty train and how pretty much every part of my house, from floors to furniture, had been peed on. The similarity to the stage I’m currently going through with girl #2 was striking, but what really caught my attention was the date. I worked it out and realized that when I had written this journal, G-Girl was about three and a half. A.K.A. my mushy mommy brain had glossed over the potty training journey with girl #1. I didn’t have the facts straight, she wasn’t actually magically potty trained in time for her third birthday. And she turned out just fine.

Maybe I am not actually the Worst Mom Ever.

I’m just putting this out there in case anyone else’s potty training journey seems rather bumpy and prolonged. In case you are also feeling like fighting your stubborn preschooler on this whole potty thing is a huge parenting fail. Hang in there. They catch on eventually. And in the end does it really matter if they graduate to underwear at 18 months or 42months? By the time they hit grade school they’re all doing their business the same, right?

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Disclosure: I am a P&Gmom. As part of my affiliation with this group I receive products and special access to P&G events and opportunities. The opinions on this blog are my own.