#207 In which our hero celebrates a fairly amazing turn of events.

Potty training update: my kid is awesome.

As previously mentioned, we recently re-visited our potty training methodology; which was basically me saying “eh, she’ll do it when she’s ready” and The Scientist biting down on her tongue so hard that it bled. But even my lassie-faire attitude was starting to wear thin as Lily continued to show zero interest in crapping on the toilet.

We had, of course, heard the stories of parents who took their kids out of diapers and put them into real underwear and poof! Five days later they’re completely potty trained. An anonymous commenter on this very blog reported that it only took her kid TWO DAYS in underwear to permanently leave diapers behind.

The thing is, we’d tried that before. And my big issue is that when Lily has an “accident” she’s not the one who pays the price, I am. She's not the one who gets nauseated when I’m leaning over the utility tub scrubbing mud out of a tiny pair of panties.

But, I started to see the beginnings of a Big Fight between The Scientist and I bubble to the surface, so something had to be done. I mentioned to my wife that I was re-thinking the panties thing.

And, at first, it was as bad as I feared. She’d pee or poop whenever and wherever she wanted, and I cleaned up the mess. I knew that no progress would be made unless she felt uncomfortable in her wet pants, so I let her sit in it for a while. It can’t feel nice to had a saggy butt full of poop, right? After an HOUR of walking around with a big turd in her panties I finally asked, “Lily, don’t you want me to clean up the poop in your pants?” To which she replied, “No! I like poop in my pants!”

Aw, crap.

It wasn’t working. We needed to try something else. We were going to have to take her to that child shrink after all. Then something magical happened.

She started to poop on the potty.

Kinda all at once, too. One day she stayed dry all day in daycare, then she stayed dry at home. She started to tell us when she wanted to go. Then the capper: I was upstairs getting something and Lily, completely of her own volition, when to the bathroom, got on the potty herself, and laid a turd roughly the size of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I think this kid is potty trained. I’m not saying that she’ll never have another accident, but I think we’re way along the right path. It’s amazing.

And equally amazing is that my wife hasn’t said anything to me, even though she always championed more aggressive techniques and, I bet, is just dying to say, “I fucking told you so!”

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