Learning to Let Go: A Potty-Training Tale

It’s potty-training season at our house, which is no small project. (Moms, if you know, you know.)

I’m sitting on the edge of our 70s era blue bathtub, encouraging my son to pee in the potty, as he turns around for the thousandth time to press the buttons on the back. One button sounds like a flushing toilet and the other a crowd cheering and clapping. A wide smile full of little teeth and eyes that light up look into my face when he presses the cheering one.

As I sit here asking him over and over, “Did you tee-tee in the potty?” I flashback to an old Grey’s Anatomy episode. In the episode, Meredith Grey sits perched on the edge of her clawfoot bathtub chanting to her toddler, “Pee-pee in the potty!” while internally admitting her eternal frustration at the situation. She can’t simply make her toddler pee-pee in the potty any more than I can make my son go.

I can set him up for success with hourly visits to the bathroom. I can have the best equipment available to him. I can be motivated and confident about starting a new journey. But none of this gives me the control I wish I had over the outcome.

An Unexpected Struggle

Potty-training came on my radar when our son turned two and began walking into the room with his pants pulled down around his ankles, pointing at his diaper, the blue line a telltale sign that it was wet. The next clue he was ready to transition from diaper to training pants was after he began talking with more regularity, specifically, when he learned to say ‘poo.’

It took a little bit for me to realize this word meant something other than the loveable, honey-loving Pooh Bear, but ‘poo,’ as in poo-poo. My two-year-old walked in rooms announcing ‘Poo’ again and again, and after a couple of weeks I finally understood what he meant.

From these indicators we began to introduce the concept of potty-training to our son, but with no intention of pushing the skills on him just yet. The first step: acquire a toddler potty.

While we waited for his toddler potty to arrive in the mail, we let him start sitting on the big toilet, holding tight to us so he wouldn’t fall in the bowl. Letting him sit on the big toilet was a hit! He loved pulling over his stool and climbing up himself.

Based on his reaction to the big toilet, I thought the special Mickey Mouse toddler potty just his size would be a slam dunk. A no brainer, right? I just knew he would love it. The day of the Mickey throne’s arrival we played it up big to our son, letting him help put it together and place it in the bathroom himself.

What we didn’t expect was him running from the bathroom in fear of the new plastic toilet. It was as if he said, “Sure, the buttons are cool, but there is no way I am sitting on that thing.”

Potty-Training Betrayal

If I’m being honest here, I felt a little betrayed by his reaction, when he suddenly would have nothing to do with the toddler potty.

Countless stories have reached my ears about grandparents visiting grandkids and by the end of their week-long stay, the kids are potty-trained. Or other stories where the child took to potty-training like my son took to chocolate cake on his birthday, shoving the whole piece in his mouth rather than take single bites.

By the end of the first week, I felt defeated by this now useless Mickey Mouse toddler potty that taunted me each time I used the restroom. The more I worried about my son learning this skill, the more I tried to force a round peg into a square hole.

Out of My Control

After taking in the advice from other moms on potty-training, I implemented a schedule where I took Owen to the potty and had him sit on it each hour, regardless of the results. It seemed perfectly logical that at some point the action of sitting on the seat would click, and he would understand how it all worked.

A few days later, even hinting that my son try to sit on the potty would end with him screaming, crying, and holding out both hands yelling, “No!” It was your basic wrestle-the-toddler-onto-the-toilet match, in which we all lost each battle.

I pushed and pushed and pushed, knowing that eventually it would all be worth the struggle when he put the pieces of the puzzle together.

What I never fully considered was my son’s humanity. There are a lot of things under my control, but a separate, tiny human is not one of them. You can lead a thirsty horse to water, but you can’t make him drink it, as they say.

Grow at Your Own Pace

There are some situations in which I simply have no control over the outcome. The biggest lesson to take from parenting any child is you can set their feet on the right path, give them all the tools they need to succeed and all the loving support a person could ever need, but that doesn’t guarantee the outcome you desire.

I could draw conclusions from this lesson in parenting and potty-training and apply them to my spiritual life with Christ, but you’ve heard it all before. God gives us every opportunity to turn to Him, to be used in miraculous ways by Him, and yet, we continue to deviate from the path ahead.

Instead, I’ll simply say this, we grow at our own pace, not on a rigid developmental timeline. Not us and not our kids. We can’t push past the difficulty of growing and learning without robbing ourselves or others of the moment you realize you can do the thing you’ve been afraid to try.

I pray that as you move through your week God might give you the courage to let go, rather than hold tighter. When it feels as if the only way you know how to move forward is to seek more control, may you find peace in lingering in the Lord’s peaceful presence.

Photo Credit: Sagar Patil at Unsplash.com.