The Potty Training Chronicles: Stubborn Trumps Logic

Surprise.

I’ll bet you thought you weren’t going to see any more of these posts.

But my son is stubborn. And here we are again.

We went on vacation in July and it was so good. The boy had no accidents in the course of the entire 12+ hour car ride and days spent on the beach. He told us every time in the car when he needed to go to the bathroom.

Of course, we’re convinced that a few of those were just so he could tee-tee in the grass. It’s an exciting thing, apparently.

He even told us when he needed to poop. One of those times being when we were headed back to the car from a public beach that we went to because our beach at our condo was too over-run with seaweed. We were lucky that there was a port-o-potty right there.



An important first in life is your first port-o-potty experience.

It changes you forever.

But then we got home and it’s been chaos ever since. Especially after spending 4 days at Nanny’s house having “Nanny Camp” while big sister was at camp. I’ll swear that he lost his ever-lovin’ mind.

It got really bad at the end of last week. We were beside ourselves after 2 accidents at day-care and then one at home also. All in one day. And it’s the #2 side of things that’s the problem… #1 has never really been the issue.

So here’s where we are: He can do it. He has proven it. Logically, I should be dancing in the streets and shouting, “WE’RE DONE!!” But he, for some reason, is being stubborn and choosing not to.

Here’s where it gets funny, weird, and quite frustrating.

We are trying to help him by telling him when we think he needs to go. Maybe this is our problem, but when left entirely up to him at this point, we have days like we had last week and it’s not pleasant.

So last night, Mike tells him to go sit on the potty and try to poop before getting in the shower. Nathan doesn’t want to and says so. It goes on and really turns into an obedience issue of dad told him to do something and he’s balking at it.

In fact, he is apparently over at the potty puts just one cheek up on the toilet and then looks at Mike as if to say, “OK?” Mike gets on to him again and so this time he barely has both cheeks up on the edge of the seat, but not enough so that he can be productive in any way. He looks at Mike this time as if to say, “THERE, I’m ON the potty.”

Daddy’s hand, please meet Nathan’s bottom.


We laughed about it later. He's just such a little toot sometimes.

The thing is that once we get him sitting down and give him some privacy, he usually goes. He’s excited, we’re excited, he gets praise and candy and stickers.

But it seems, at this point, that no amount of prizes or sticker charts for success or toys taken away for messes is going to make a difference.

He knows what to do and how to do it. Logically it’s a no-brainer. But stubborn trumps logic.

Every time.