A slow realisation dawned on me today...our two-year-old daughter was a better potty trainer than us!
I have deduced that our daughter has an inbuilt sensor alerting her to our approach to the stair gate. No matter how Ninja like we are, we just can't get out of the gate undetected! We can no longer outrun our two, nearly three year old Super-girl without causing an injury to one of us and without the eruption of a meltdown, so we have to concede to a loss at this game of Twister. Once through the gate this is her cue to take us to the toilet, whether we need to go to the toilet or not! She takes our hands and pulls us up the stairs, shoves us into the bathroom, lifts up the lid of the toilet, points us to it or pushes us to the toilet and does not relent until we have sat down. If we insist that we don't need to go, she throws herself on the floor and a Tsunami begins. At first, we used the toilet as we usually needed a wee. However, now we realise that we have been toilet-trained by a two-year-old, we must regroup and counteract, because we are after all the adults! We must turn the tables and potty train our daughter. It's going to be a military operation as her will is like Fort Knox. But we will not surrender!
Our daughter's initial success in training us to use the toilet reminded me of our attempts to get the cat to stop clawing the furniture. To stop her clawing the furniture, we encouraged her to claw the scratch post by offering her Dreamies after she scratched it instead of the furniture, however, we were then trained by the cat, as she used this as a way of communicating to us what she wanted, which was usually to go outside (we have no cat flap).
Anyway, where our daughter has succeeded in toilet training us, trying to potty train our daughter has so far failed.
We have been trying to potty train her over the last six months and at first we thought we were making progress as initially she would sit on the toilet before getting into her bath, briefly, but it was progress, even though she would wait until she got into the bath to wee, she seemed to revel in this simple act of determination to wee on her own terms. Further simple acts of rebellion have been wearing the toilet seat or potty on her head and standing in her potty which she thinks is hilarious. Independent and stubborn are her middle names.
However, at some point, she decided that she would not sit on her seat before a bath, so we were going backwards. Of course we tried putting her on the toilet or the potty but she would then leap off, and as neither of us are Usain Bolt, this soon lost traction as we could not catch her quickly, it was also upsetting to see her so distressed.
Things then deteriorated further, every suggestion to sit on the potty or the toilet was met with the utterance of "no!"
Then followed the arms becoming crossed, a look at the floor and a "no!" She could not be budged.
We tried buying her some underwear with her favourite television characters on, but this was also unsuccessful.
We also purchased some potty-training books and were gifted some in the hope that these would help. One even has her favourite character in it. One of the books "Lulu's Loo," https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lulus-Loo-Camilla-Reid/dp/1408802651/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lulu%27s+loo&qid=1619957059&sr=8-1
has proved very popular as it's quite interactive, you can put Lulu's nappy on her for example, which our daughter loves to do, and there are also tactile parts to the pages, plus it is bright and colourful and has a good story-line, however, none of the books have been successful yet with potty training, but we live in hope that one day they will...
By engaging in war, this was not going to be battle we will win, any time soon. We realised it was fruitless to push it...
Many of our friends and family had offered advice and guidance, one such offering was bribery. We haven't yet given into this as the professionals have advised us that she will use the potty or the toilet when she is ready to and any attempts to fast forward this, will cause problems. I wish we had known this sooner; it would have saved a lot of tears from all of us. Fingers crossed one day she will be potty trained. Hopefully it will be before we are pensioners! Bribery will be our last resort. It will be the final trick up our sleeve, so for now we will continue with gentle persuasion.
Other escapades that involve the failed stair negotiation, when we apparently don't need the toilet, occur whether she is undressed or dressed, usually undressed, she opens the front door and tries to make a bid for freedom. We now try to remember to take the key out of the door to avoid this...It's usually when we are in a hurry. It is futile to try to negotiate a return to the sanctuary of the front room to Peppa Pig and to encourage a climb of Everest as this nearly always results in a hurricane of tears, however ,with no other choice available it usually ends in a back-breaking inelegant relocation of said Super-girl to the top of Snowdonia where a river of tears forms with gale force winds of distress. This at least means she is safe, however, today things reached a new low as Super-girl has learned how to open the stair gate, she is no longer safe, so I had to call in reinforcements so I could get ready. 0-2 to Super-girl, for now...
Despite all this, we would not change her for the world as we know we have a beautiful warrior daughter, a leader not a sheep. One day she will walk on the moon or be a world leader!
I am sure that many of you have your own potty-training nightmares and your own potty training successes, tips. Feel free to share them to inspire us or to bring us some joy.