A couple years ago my big brother wrote a piece about manipulating our mom during potty training.  All I have to say about that is: Amateur.  Total amateur!  Not only do I have mom towing the line, I have the whole entire family cow-towing to my every ridiculous whim- including him!

You see, I am not necessarily in it just for the treats and prizes like he was.  Plus, the jelly beans were a joke!  Chocolate only for this girl!  I quickly rectified that sitch when I steam-rolled mom off the toilet yesterday and hollered, “choca-choca.”  Who does she think she is trying to pee before she gets something for ME simply because she is already in the bathroom?!  Immediate gratification is a must if she wants me to keep doing this.
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But I digress, I mostly derive joy from my astounding ability to make eight people do my bidding when the only tools at my disposal are grunts, gestures, and a handful of poorly pronounced words.  It’s masterful, really.
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When mommy asks if I need to potty I sometimes shake my head and say, “Eh-uh.”  She knows from experience that this means, ‘try to make me and you will get a glimpse into hell,” so she waits and asks later.  Most of the time I respond with “Argh!” like a pirate.  This means, ‘yes, unless I change my mind half way there’ or, ‘I already wet my pants, but I am more than happy to hang out in the bathroom for no apparent reason other than to have your undivided attention for awhile.’  After all, maintaining a little mystery and unpredictability is vital, or the jig is up.
Anyway, once I decide we should head off to the potty it is on!   The next half hour is ALL about ME!

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​First off, I prefer an audience for every toilet-using performance.  I pull on mom and each present siblings and say, “Paw-yee.”  They get the picture and traipse down the hall in a line.  I bring up the rear holding onto a couple hands to ensure no one escapes.  If they try, I will scream, “PAAAW-YEEE!”  Then mom steps in and makes them come because she does not want me to wet my pants before we get there, but ya’ know, it happens.  Plenty.  My biggest sister was pretty annoyed when I insisted four siblings accompany me while she was taking a shower.  “What is everyone doing in here?” she squealed.  It was totes hilair! 

Once we get all settled in the bathroom, - Oh who am I kidding?  We are never ‘settled.’  I get on and off the potty a few times to change my mind about the use of the potty ring and to adjust the position of the stool.   Sometimes I randomly push someone and say, “WAY!” so they will leave, usually mom ‘cause she is always stopping me from unrolling fourteen feet of T.P.  Then a couple siblings grumble that they wish they were the ones I had decided to push away.  I really love to string out this process when there is no possible chance of me actually peeing.  Mom lets the kids all go after a bit and I know I have pushed it too far.

I DO take the initiative and go potty all on my own sometimes too.  I follow other people to the bathroom and just as they unzip their pants, I push past them and throw my upper body over the hole and scream, “MINE!”  Watching them do the potty dance while I diddle-fart around trying to go is pretty freaking funny!   If someone manages to get sat down before I show up, he or she better be prepared to fend off some football tackle moves as I attempt to take back MY spot!  Psh!  They tell me to ‘just wait a second.’  PUH-lease!  I don’t have a second.  Are you new here?  I wait for no one.

Of course, I have to actually go pee fairly often to keep everyone entranced.  If I go right away, I sit and say, “Mo!” to keep everyone there.  We all know there is no more.  But they stay just in case.  What if I need to poop?  Right?  One of my sister’s said, “I am NOT doing this anymore once she turns four!”  That is like nine months away.  I am quite sure I will break her looong before that! 

I relish in the ‘pee in the potty’ celebrations!  In a family of seven kids, it is easy to feel overlooked, but when I pee in the toilet all is right with the world.  They all clap like goofy seals and grin like deranged clowns.  They holler ‘Yay! You did it!  Good job!’  They all give me five, except whoever I decide to shun that time.  It's just a thing I do to keep them on their toes.  I am pretty sure mom would set off fireworks in my honor if we weren’t indoors. 

Hmmm…How could I let her know I want those tiny confetti poppers from New Year’s?  She would totally do it.  And then of course there is the chocolate.  It is only for me and if anyone else touches it, mom gets super mad!  What if we were to run out and I peed?  Seriously!

Then it is on to putting undies back on me!  I generally refuse to wear the ones I had just been wearing.  I mean, if I did, the whole thing would just be over and mom could go back to laundry and dishes.  That is unacceptable.  I desire undivided attention for much more than the ten to fifteen minutes we spend in the bathroom every couple hours.  I once had to go as far as whipping the panties out of mom’s hand and tossing them into the already flushing toilet.  Never gonna have to wear that pair again!  Also, it is a good thing we don’t have neighbors.  They would think mom is beating me if they heard the way I scream when she tries to put the same undies back on.  But ya’ know, gotta do, whatcha gotta do.

She has finally learned to start giving me ‘choices.’  Whoever thought giving toddlers choices would make them easier to deal with never had a kid like me!  I can drag out making a choice for seemingly half a day!  I pick one and once it is half way on, I whip out the wild banshee scream again and choose a different pair.  It is also fun to pretend I am letting mommy choose for me.  I hold up two pair and say, “Deese?  Deese?”  Trust me, it's cute.

Of course, when she picks, she is ALWAYS wrong, so I have to start over with two completely different pair.  It gets less and less cute to her.  Sometimes I choose one of my big sisters to help me get undies when I know I have pushed mom to the brink of insanity.  I am lovely for them.  I hold out some panties and sweetly say, "Helpy, helpy?"  It really gets my mom's goat. They are much less invested in this whole 'no more diapers' thing than she is, so I can't toy with them as much.

I poop in the toilet nearly every day.  This way, mom holds onto hope that this is going well and sticks with it.  Otherwise, she would never put up with this ridiculous crap.  I've got to give my big bros a shout out here for making mom just a tad unstable and irrational in this department.  She likes the poo getting in the toilet so much because of them that I can wet my pants at will and she is all like, ‘Ah what evs.  She pooped in the toilet!  Praise Jesus!’

I know I sound like a devious monster, but I promise I am absolutely ADORBS just often enough.  There is this squinty grin thing I do that they all fawn over endlessly and when I do this duck-lip kissy-face thing they all totally melt.  They are putty in my hands!  Muaaah-ha-ha-ha!

  Ooops… I mean… I am sweet and lovey… Really!!

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My  youngest child is two and a half.  After the horribly nightmarish potty-training experiences with my youngest two boys, I figured I would not even entertain the idea of training her until next summer when she would be a couple months past her third birthday and if that doesn't go smoothly I will give up and buckle down over the following Christmas break to make sure she is throughly trained before she turns four.  But as every parent out there knows, kids have a sixth sense about moms and their plans and how to torpedo them.  So my dear, sweet, body-throwing scream-machine has decided there is nothing more delightful than sitting on the potty.

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I should be overjoyed, right?  I should jump on this train and ride it all the way to diaper freedom.  It will be so easy, right?  No, no...no it will not.  
Why do you ask?
Well, here's what going down so far:
Toddler removes diaper full of fresh, warm pee.
Toddler drags mommy to the bathroom and sits on the potty. 
Toddler gets up and switches the princess potty ring to the Cars potty ring and sits back down.  
She switches them three more times.
She insists (via pointing at a book and my mouth) that I read to her.
She throws the book half way through and indicates with more pointing that she wants to hear a different book.  
I suggest that we put some training pants on her and read on the couch. 
She screams like I am removing a limb from her body as I lift her foot to put it in her training pants.
She smacks the training pants out of my hand.
She goes back to alternating the potty rings.
She screams some more when I leave the room.
I go about accomplishing something useful until she realizes I'm not coming back and starts roaming the house completely naked.
I forcibly wrestle her into the training pants or a diaper depending on my mood and how soon we have to leave the house. 
An hour later I suggest we go to the potty again on the rare occasion I have a solid thirty minutes to spend sitting on the bathroom stool.

And then while I get some more useful stuff accomplished, my brain thinks this:

• She just had some juice, so she should need to pee in an hour, so we will go back to the bathroom and try again.  Then we will have to go to town, so we will try some more training tomorrow.
• But maybe this part time training is just going to completely confuse her and sitting in the bathroom for an hour every day is a waste of time and doing more harm than good.  Maybe I should totally ban her from the bathroom and wait like I was originally planning.  Then once she is finally allowed in there, she will be even more excited.
• But what if this is the window where she is interested in doing what everybody else is doing because she is in such a copy-cat phase right now, and later on she won't care.  I need to take advantage of that while it lasts.
• But she doesn't seem truly ready since she always waits until AFTER she pees to sit on the potty.  I should wait until she can talk.
• But my earliest potty-trainer couldn't talk and somehow that worked. Maybe I should stick with it.  I will give it my all for a week.
• But,ugh!  This week is sooo busy.  We aren't going to be home enough to even bother trying!  Maybe next week will be less busy.
• But, yeah right, that's what you always think.  You are NEVER going to be home enough.  You are never going to have the patience to have your whole day revolve around potty-training for a whole week anyway.  And after that, you won't remember to take her potty out in public a couple times and you will put her back in diapers to avoid that whole mess.  You should let her do what she wants and quit worrying about it so much!
• But....Start again at second bullet.

So you see, despite successfully completing this process four out of the last six times, I am very certain that whatever I decide to do will be wrong.  

So if anyone could tell me in the comments which of my 'buts' is the least insane sounding, I could use the advice.

P.S.  These cloth diapers below are awesome.  They can pull up and down like training pants, but they don't leak everywhere because they are actually diapers.  She allows me to put these on her without screaming about half the time, which is better than the guaranteed screaming associated with the training pants.  Extra bonus:  She can't undo the snaps and fling it across the room like she does with the velcro on disposable diapers.  They are super cute too, and come in different prints for boys!

    Yesterday, my son pooped in the toilet all by himself (sans suppository), after announcing he needed to go, all by himself.  There have been Olympic Gold medalists and Super Bowl Champions whose celebrations paled in comparison to mine after this amazing moment.  I hugged and kissed him, I clapped, I cheered, I literally jumped for joy.  He was given candy, a toy, and FIVE stickers on his chart.  After the pure astonishment subsided, I giggled to myself realizing that I could not think of one thing that would be more exciting to me than seeing poop in a toilet!

    Here is a list of things that have happened recently or will happen soon that definitely should be more exciting than poop in the toilet, but in my current state of desperation are just not:
1.  The baby learning to wave bye-bye.
2.  My daughter emptying the dishwasher without being
asked when it was someone else's chore.
3.  Plans to get a new sprinkler system and lawn.
4.  My son getting his driver's license.
5.  Getting an article published on another site.
6.  My Mother's Day breakfast and gifts.
7.  My daughter's relay team placing first at the league meet.
8.  My son getting a 100% on an Algebra exam.
9.  School being out for the summer.
10.  The baby starting to sleep through the night again after being sick for over a week. 
(I know you think I am exaggerting with this one, but I am seriously not!)

I have used a plethora of books, apps, medications, and bathroom accessories throughout my quests to potty-train.  Like I have said before, I am not going to tell you that any of these are the magic key to potty-training success.  However, I am also not going to tell you any of these are useless.  Different kids need different approaches, so I thought a list compiled all in one place would be useful for parents exploring their options if they realize taking three entire days out of regular life to potty-train isn't in their cards.
    Obviously there are all kinds of fancy potty seats on the market.  I own a pretty run-of-the-mill seat that has proven helpful when I want to be able to keep the potty within a few feet of the child at all times.    However, continually dumping a potty chair is just not my thing!  I much prefer the combination of a potty ring and a squatty potty stool long term.  The squatty potty also helps anyone with bowel issues use the bathroom more easily.  We have had them for a few months now and I definitely prefer them to regular step stools.  They don't flip over if the child steps on one side and they can slide in under the toilet so they aren't always in the way. 

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Now for how to dress them.  Preferably as little as possible.  The type of underwear below are my favorite because the child can feel the wet, but it minimizes the mess somewhat.   New pants will still be required, but you won't need  ask the lady at Burger King to mop the play place floor.  I still use pull-ups when I am expecting a possible poo-on-the-go situation because storing poopy pants in your diaper bag will ruin it for all of eternity.  I have used ALL the poop smell cleaners.  They do have their limits.

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Now to the books and apps and other fun stuff!  We pretty much have it all.  The current favorite is "Even Pirates Poop"  The rhyme scheme is not perfect in this book, but that only annoys English major moms like myself - toddlers just like pirates.  It came with a sticker chart and gold coin stickers that is way cooler than the ones I print myself.

We also have apotty monkey with his own potty chair that I got for a steal on Zulily.com, but is always available onAmazon.  It inspired my post How to Drive Your Mom Bananas if She Buys a Potty Monkey, which you should definitely read before purchasing.  I've got kind of a love/hate thing going for it.
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 I have an app on my phone called See Me Go Potty from Avakid (see link below) that had my son mesmerized until he discovered Fruit Ninja, but it definitely helped get the process started.  If you can purchase only one thing for potty-training, this should definitely be the one!  It simply shows the entire correct process, from mommy requesting the child to potty, all the way to washing and drying hands in short simple sentences and video.  I am going to have my next child watch it 800,000 before I ever let her set foot in the bathroom.  (Updated note:  She has watched it a few times, I deleted Fruit Ninja, and I'm sometimes kicking myself for ever letting her set foot in the bathroom before the 800,000 mark was reached.)  As an added bonus, this app seems to open all by itself on occasion and I have experienced some weird looks and an uncontrollably giggling eye doctor when my phone blared, "See me go potty."  It's very amusing.

Sanity Saving Cleaners
This experience is very unlikely to go mess-free.  If you care even a little bit about your floors and furniture, I highly suggest purchasing a carpet shampooer.  This one is amazing.  The hand held tool is not available on many carpet cleaners, but it is an absolute must for anyone with kids.  Even if potty-training isn't a huge messy disaster, there will be vomit and spilled kool-aid in your future and you will thank me every time.

Next head of to the doggie aisle and shop for cleaners.  There are more pee smell removers out there than I can keep track of, but the key word to look for is 'natural enzymes' when you are choosing one.   They are generally pretty pricey, so I haven't been able to test as many as I would like, but I can vouch for Kids'n'Pets being a good one and Nature's Miracle is good if you don't mind fragrances. 
​Particularly if you have boys, a UV light is an important pee-seeking tool.  You simply head into that room where the smell just won't seem to go away, and find the spots your munchkin has tested out his new-found fire hose.  

And finally, for the medications.  The majority of kids never have any need for medication, but if in doubt, start medicating sooner rather than later.  I think if I had realized that my son was backed up a lot sooner and started doing something about it, he may never have ended up with so much trouble.  There is a lot of debate about children becoming dependent on laxatives and suppositories.  My recent on-line research about it has just confused me further!  One doctor we went to told us not to use suppositories or enemas and just use oral medication, such as Pedia-lax.  Now I have been told exactly the opposite.  Regardless of which theory is correct, it is a good idea to have both on hand just in case you end up with a toddler on the potty hollering that the poop won't come out!  I think being filled with poop has to be worse for a kid than either one.
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        I am so desperate to get my son to use the toilet I am currently looking into pooping yoga.  I saw this idea in the comments of an encopresis support group site.  Those groups don’t help me.  I always get done reading and feel like a failure because blahblahmom25 has this great routine for medication and potty-sitting and her child is making great progress.  Mine isn’t; and I start blaming myself and making excuses to myself.  
     I tell myself that blahblahmom25 probably only has one or two kids and gets to sit at home and focus all of her mental energy on her child’s bowel habits 24/7.  Of course, visiting these sites on your tiny phone screen, while squatting on the floor of a public school bathroom and listening to the final buzzer of a really close junior high basketball game you would be watching if you weren’t taking your toddler to the toilet for the umpteenth time is probably a bad idea. It is a mistake I will not make again.
        But, as I squatted there rubbing my little guy’s back, whispering encouraging words in his ear like a Lamaze coach during the final stage of labor, I realized something.  I decided (mostly to keep myself from drowning in a whirlpool of increasing self-degradation) that these moms are probably being less than honest.  Why would they even be on such a site if everything was going oh-so-wonderful?  
I have decided that while they might be making some improvements and feeling some hope, they are probably in the same one-step-forward, two-steps-back boat that I am.

        My mom just cannot stop with this potty-training nonsense!  Awhile back, she bought this monkey that came with his very own teeny, tiny potty.  At first I completely loved it.  Every so often he would say, "I need to go potty.  Take me to the potty!"  I would take him of course, because if you sit him on the potty he sings a song to you.

        I was having so much fun playing with my new toy, but then my mom had to go and ruin it by asking ME to go sit on the big potty.  Can you believe her?  The nerve!  I had a huge fit and then that monkey disappeared for awhile.  I am not sure what happened to him, but I found him today.  I am a whole six months older now, so I have all my mom's crazy tricks figured out.  
 
This time around I will have a great time with my cute little monkey, and as a bonus, I will drive my mom completely bananas with him.  Just in case your mom ever buys a potty monkey for you, here are some tips on how to drive your mom bananas too:

• Pee your pants while you are busy putting the monkey on his potty.  This way your mom cannot try to get you to go.
• Put the monkey on his potty and leave him there.  He will keep singing and singing and talking about how much fun it is to go on the potty.  The best time to do this is when your mom is busy trying to cook dinner or especially when she is trying to rock your baby sister to sleep.  She will not dare disturb the baby by hollering at you to make it stop singing.
• At bedtime, leave the monkey in a strategic location where your mom cannot hear it while she is in the kitchen or living room, but she can hear it in her bedroom.  If you get really lucky, it will ask to go to the potty just as she begins to drift off to sleep.  It will make her think twice about turning it on again the next day!

Love this?  Try this:
Ways to Manipulate Your Mom
(told by a three-year-old Potty-trainer)

1. Pure excitement Stage:  You are reinvigorated after a break and have seen a glimmer of hope that your child is either more developmentally ready or has an increased desire to be potty trained.  You put all thoughts of failure aside and just keep telling yourself the end of diapers is near!

2. Pee here, poo there, pee and poo everywhere Stage:  During this stage you are calmly cleaning up mess after mess and being super encouraging.  You hang on to the joy of the one or two times something got in the toilet.  You convince yourself that your negativity and lack of commitment has been the problem all along and if you just keep at it, success is imminent.
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3. Mad-dash-to-the-store-for-pull-ups Stage:  This stage comes about very suddenly when you realize that the upcoming wedding, birthday party, or other special event is tomorrow.  Your child is wearing a certain outfit for it and you really don't want it covered in poop and pee, so your buy pull-ups just for this one day.  Right?  You wonder how the event possibly snuck up you so quickly and then you realize that 90% of your brain function has been consumed with bodily functions and the other 10% is just trying to keep you showered, fed, and clothed.

4. Mommy-starts-to-lose-it Stage:  You become paranoid and think there is a poop smell everywhere you go. You start compulsively washing your hands more than Lady Macbeth because you always think they smell like poop.  You start throwing underwear in the trash and using the pull-ups you bought in stage 3 more and more often.  It takes every fiber of your being to restrain yourself from strangling a dear friend at playgroup telling everyone about the three-day potty-training technique that worked so well for her child.  If Christmas, Valentine's Day, or your birthday roll around during this stage, you ask your husband to clean up poop and pee for a day as a gift.
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5.  It-is-sooo-time-to-take-a-break Stage:  That negativity and lack of commitment completely take over. This stage is very different depending upon how many times you have been through the cycle.  During the first two or three cycles, this stage is a giant sigh of relief.  You realize your child is just not ready and you are completely thrilled to just change diapers for awhile longer.  After those first three rounds, this stage usually involves crying and recurring nightmares about waving good-bye to a college-bound teen wearing a giant diaper.  And did I mention crying?

Love this?  Read this!

 I guess I really needed this outlet in order to make another go of it potty-training my three-year-old because I decided to hide the pull-ups again.  I bought this ridiculous castle toy that we don't need, but he really wanted, that I never in a million years would have purchased if it weren't for the 80% off price tag at a store closing sale.  He agreed to wait to open it until his entire poopy chart was full.  We even managed to have a nice talk about it in the store without him hollering the word poop really loud.  In the back of my mind I had this concern that as soon as I started this page about my struggles with
potty-training, he would suddenly have some amazing, miraculous overnight success and then I would fail to bring the same fervor to the subject when merely recalling my difficulties after they were over.  Well, here I am laughing at such a ridiculous preponderance! Hahahahah! 
That is not how the castle toy bribe went down at all! Instead, he pooped his pants the next day right when it was time to leave the house.  I cleaned him up and sent him off to his room to grab some clean pants while I put the baby in her seat.  He didn't return in a timely manner, so I headed down the hall to his room.  No luck.  Then I heard a noise in my room and there he was, half naked, hacking into the castle box, surrounded by confetti-sized pieces of cardboard.  Why didn't I put the castle up out of his reach you ask?  Oh, I did!  This was not an impulse disobedience, he had been stealthily working on this all morning apparently.  I discovered a bar stool from my kitchen in the closet, with another box on top of it for him to get high enough to reach the toy.  Needless to say, I am at a complete loss as to what to do next.  I never perceived him to be such a willful child until potty-training time reared its ugly head.  I think my oldest child, king of willful children, skewed my perceptions on this front.  Now I am desperately trying to avoid a brewing power struggle.  He seems to insist on having one anyway.  I am losing a battle I never tried to fight, leaving him king of the potty castle!

As most of us toddlers know, moms will do just about anything to get us to use the toilet.  It is the first time in our lives when we can really start feeling we have control over our own destinies!  Personally, I aim to be a pull-up wearer for life!  If you enjoy driving your mother completely crazy and would like to join me in maximizing the bribes your mom offers just follow these tips:
1. Pretend you are finally ready for this potty-training thing at really inconvenient times.  Major shopping days, sporting events, long car rides, and anywhere that only port-a-potties are available are all excellent choices.
2.  Discuss embarrassing things in public bathrooms so that when she rushes you and you later poop your pants, she thinks it is her fault.  Try things like, 'It is time for you to poop now, mom!," "The poop is owie!," and "That little turd is big enough! Give me the candy!"
3.  Cheer for her when she goes potty and suggest that she should get a sticker and since she doesn't have her own sticker chart, she can just put her sticker on yours!
4.  If she suggests you wear a pull-up, insist for the first time ever to wear undies.  She will be so excited she might give you a sucker just for putting them on!  But beware, she will try it again tomorrow.  Don't take the bait!
5.  Randomly decide you no longer like whatever prize she has been giving you for potty-training successes.  She will try her hardest to come up with something even bigger and better!  Personally, my goal is to be offered a corvette when I turn 16!

I am dying laughing over this portable urinal below!  I am sure it is lots easier to use than a Pepsi bottle though!
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