What She Said: The perils of potty training

Welcome to my new column, What She Said, where I’ll be writing about all things motherhood and more.

I’m in the middle of potty-training my almost three-year-old. Or ‘potty-learning’, if you aspire to be the kind of parent who does everything according to the latest research on how to not f*ck up your kids. Don’t we all? As if that one linguistic swap is going to make the blindest bit of difference to a toddler who, when prompted by you for the seventieth time today, finds themselves so offended by your suggestion they dropkick their potty through the nearest window. Why is it that we demand such a massive change of their ‘under construction’ brains right at the point where they’re at their most defiant? The thing is, I know my son fully grasps the concept of going to the toilet; that for us is not the hard part. Cognitively he is there. The hard part is that he just hates being told – or asked, or gently nudged, or even bribed – to do anything. Even if it’s something he wants to do. Nope, toddlers do things on their own terms, even if that means stewing in their own urine. The trick is convincing them that what you want them to do is their own idea, which I’ve yet to figure out.

I went into this experience thinking we’d be more or less done in three days. Another milestone under the belt. I signed up for a potty-training course – the Big Little Feelings one, which admittedly is very helpful – with the expectation that if we started the process on Friday, we’d hit a bit of resistance on Saturday but by Sunday, he’d be swanning in and out of the toilet of his own accord, complete with a newspaper under his arm. Oh, the naivety. Like most of these milestones, this one is rarely linear. Like most, they warrant at least a bit of banging your head against a wall. It’s hard to believe – when you’re handed a poo as though it’s a present – that it will ever come right. You need the patience of a saint, the perspective that one day, without even realising it, you will be out the other side, and the smarts to stock up on wine before you even begin.

I also started off firmly with the belief that we would not be using rewards to encourage him to go to the potty. It’s better for them to be internally motivated, you see, otherwise you come up against power struggles or meltdowns surrounding said rewards. It’s better for the long term, so the course experts told me. HA, you fool. It reminds me of my pre-parent self when I decided that I would never be the kind of parent to give my child refined sugar when I can just get up an hour early to batch cook him some homemade broccoli and cheese scones instead. Three years in, his diet now consists mostly of buttered pasta and Chupa Chup lollipops, and honestly, it’s the least of my concerns.

Once the initial novelty of the new Paw Patrol potty had worn off (this lasted a few hours), I climbed down off my high horse, fully in favour of bribery, and high tailed it to the nearest Spar to stock up on Jelly Tots and Smarties. We decided on one sweet for a pee in the potty and three treats for the mighty poo. Reasonable, I thought. Someone then messaged me on Instagram to say that when their child inevitably stopped playing ball for the Smarties, they had to up the ante on the treats. So weary did they grow, desperate to see something in that potty as proof of their progress, they handed their daughter an entire Easter Egg. Whatever it takes.

I’ve been sharing the highs and lows of our toilet training experience on social media – both to normalise the aspects of parenting we rarely see and because I need to know I’m not the only one screaming into a pillow by 5pm most days. I’ve never received as many messages of solidarity. Lots of mothers have gone out of their way to validate what a literal shit show it is while reassuring me that it will soon be something we laugh about. They too were unaware of how difficult it could be. Plenty have shared war stories so spit-out-your-tea funny, they’ve helped me embrace the chaos. Special thanks to the woman who was busy cooking a Bolognese when her child did a poo on the floor only to turn around and find the family dog gobbling it up whole.

While most of these phases are ordinary and unremarkable for the most part, they can still be hugely challenging when you’re in the thick of it. They deserve airtime and acknowledgement. Whether it’s weaning or toilet training or navigating sleep issues or helping your child overcome their separation anxiety, the work that goes into helping set a small human up for the big bad world is enormous, yet so often it’s reduced to ‘just’ parenting or ‘just’ mothering. It is not ‘just’ anything. It is monumental. It goes unnoticed because nobody’s going to give you a promotion for it, or a pay increase, or an extra day off. I’m not going to put ‘toilet trained my toddler’ on my Linked In profile, even though it will be one of my proudest achievements (if I ever get there, will I get there?). But maybe I bloody well should.