The Longest Shortest Time

The Little Girl Who Lived in France

I can’t believe that in all the time I’ve been writing this blog, I have not yet introduced you to Bop-bop. Bop-bop lives in France. She is sometimes a little girl, sometimes a baby, and sometimes and woman. She is always a she, because only “she’s” live in France. She is invisible, but you must be careful not to walk into her. Bop-bop does all of the things you wish you could do. Above all, Bop-bop uses the potty.

Bop-bop has been with us for around 4 months now, mostly popping up during times of high anxiety. I think Sasha made her come from France because a friend of hers at school went to France last summer and everyone was ooh-ing and ahh-ing over how fancy and exciting that was. I first met Bop-bop at dinner one night, after a day (a stretch of weeks, really) of Sasha screaming and hitting and throwing things. In a rare calm-ish moment over dinner, she spontaneously started telling me a story, which I grabbed a Sharpie to transcribe:

What, you can’t read that? Okay, I’ll translate, given that this beloved document has fallen victim to Sasha’s covering up syndrome. It says:

There was a little girl who lived in France.

She said: Hitting is OK.

Whining is OK.

Dumping out your nuts is OK.

Putting your nukkie in your mouth is OK.

Breaking your glass is OK. (Not sure where this one came from—unlike the others, this is not something she has ever done. Maybe it was a desire?)

She flushed her pee and poo away. She put on underwear. And some pull-up diapers too. THE END.

In retrospect, it is so obvious to me that Bop-bop was born out of Sasha’s simultaneous struggle to give up her pacifier and her diapers. To pass from babyhood to big-girlhood. I had been pretty firmly pushing for saying goodbye to the pacifier back then, though not really for the diapers. I also now realize that her lashing out probably had to do with the fact that deep down what she really wanted was to be a big girl and give these things up, but she didn’t know how to do it and that powerless feeling was incredibly scary. I talked about our process with giving up the pacifier here, so let me move on to this potty business, which we are still smack dab in the middle of, so I may not have a super clear analysis of it, but I think I’m pretty close.

You may remember the poop-in-the-tub incident, which brought all potty training to a halt last year? Ever since then I have been very hands off about the potty, inviting Sasha to try but never pushing. There were two times that I made a more concerted effort to get the ball rolling. The first time, she asked to wear underpants, so I put her in a pair and explained that this meant she would have to tell me when she needed to go. I didn’t want her to be ashamed if she had an accident, so I was very sure to tell her it would be okay if she accidentally went in her pants; we’d just clean it up. I had this feeling that her fear of making a mistake was holding her back from doing something she was fully capable of doing. Not surprisingly, she went in her pants.

“It’s okay, we just clean it up, Mommy. Right?” she said.

“Right, baby,” I told her. “We’ll just get you fresh underpants and we’ll try again.”

This cycle kept repeating itself and she seemed to be deriving joy from the chance to pick out a new pair of underpants every half hour. First rainbows, now cupcakes, now umbrellas! This was not what I had in mind when I thought about potty training, so I put a stop to it and told her she could wear underpants when she was ready to start telling me when she had to go. And she seemed all too relieved to get those diapers back on her little tush.

A couple months went by and then I tried again, this time motivated by a swim class that I thought she would only be welcome to join if she was out of diapers. I chronicled that unsuccessful process here.

How to potty train your kid is such a personal choice, just like sleep training and getting rid of a pacifier. I have heard some people say that potty training works best with a hands-off approach. That’s always sounded appealing to me—after all, you can’t force a person to go to the bathroom. But I have to say that in the last week, at least for my particular child, my mind has completely been changed. I mean, I’m not advocating for brute force or anger over this issue. Just some encouraging and consistent pressure. Sure, this tactic is in my best interest, but what I am seeing now is that it is also in hers.

I’ve mentioned more than once on LST that Sasha has been a strong screamer right from the get go. Recently, her loudest and most sustained screams have been about one thing and one thing only: pooping in her diaper when she’s in public. We were at our favorite kids’ consignment shop last week, when I smelled the distinct odor of toddler poop as Sasha ran past me. I didn’t make a big deal; just said quietly that we needed to go to the car (a few blocks away) and change her. What followed was the biggest tantrum I’ve ever seen from her. Thrashing. Yelling that she needed to stop and pick flowers in people’s front yards. Pulling my arm down with the weight of her body. When we got to the car, I offered to change her in the privacy of the front seat. She threw herself on the ground and insisted that she wanted to be changed in the dirt. Which I did. Reluctantly. While she screamed that she didn’t want this. And passers-by thought lord knows what. The entire ride home she screamed so loud out the window that I wouldn’t be surprised if other drivers thought an ambulance was coming.

This is it, I thought. The diapers must go. Now. It is what she wants.

But how?

What I decided to do is basically use the same technique that helped us through sleep training and pacifier removal. I just straight-up told her we were saying goodbye to diapers. And I had her pick a day on the calendar for when to begin. We had a false start, when she reverted to the same rotating underpants reaction that she’d had before, and I chickened out for a day. But I finally gathered my wits and went all in: no more diapers. And I’m pleased to report, it’s been working. We’ve been in this routine, where I pick her up from school, take her home, and we play outside for hours. We bring out snacks and drinks and a potty. At first I was asking her to try every 20 minutes (she got a kick out of picking a ringtone on my phone for the timer) and then she started running to the potty of her own volition. Most of the time nothing came out.

But then one time it did. And there was a lot. And she was so, so happy. Like, not just in that moment, but for the rest of the day. She reports that Bop-bop is very happy, too. Clapping, no less!

And then it kept happening. A trickle here, a trickle there. She gets to choose whether she goes in her little red potty or a potty seat over the toilet. She eats snacks on the potty (cantaloupe sticks are her current favorite) and she sing songs (“Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins, at the top of her lungs). I allowed her to wear a diaper to school yesterday to avoid public humiliation, but she never asks to go when she’s in a diaper. And why would she? She’s wearing a toilet. So I sent her in underpants today, with plenty of changes of clothes. Last night was her first night in underpants, which was a long, sleepless night for our whole family, but that was what I expected. The advice I’ve gotten from Alyson, the mommy-baby social worker I sometimes consult, is that it’s best to cut out diapers at night at the same time as daytime, for consistency. That it’ll be hard at first but less confusing for the kid in the long run. I do think that’ll be a good strategy for Sasha.

I have plans this afternoon, after I pick her up from school, to make a ceremony out of packing up her last remaining diapers and putting them in the attic, where we store things we intend to pass along to babies. While I don’t really agree with that thing doctors tell you about pacifiers—that you should tell your kid they are going to give the paci to a baby who needs it—I do like that idea for diapers, because a growing baby could in fact use the diapers.

Okay, I must sign off to go and see how day #1 at school sans diapers went regarding #1 and #2. I will fill you in. Maybe we will have made it to France by then. Or will at least be halfway there. In the meantime, tell us YOUR potty training sagas! What worked? What didn’t? Anything surprise you?