Surrender: Gradual Success with Non-Coercive Potty Training

This morning while still in bed, I heard Lucas ever so sweetly call out from the bathroom, "Toilet paper, please. Mommy … toilet paper, please."

I walked into the bathroom to find him sitting patiently on his potty chair, a smile on his face. "Wow, Lucas, you did this all by yourself. How independent of you," I told him as I handed him a bit of toilet paper.

After the strategic discovery that gave us a great start back in May, followed by his love affair with Pull-Ups and commensurate loss of interest in the actual potty, his bathroom independence has taken a quantum leap forward in the last week. My patience, through gritted teeth, seems to be finally paying off.

By patience, I mean my intention to make the potty-training process free of coercion and stress for Lucas. By gritted teeth, I mean my fear that he may just decide to take another year to get around to using the bathroom, and we'd have to give up his spot at preschool next month. I worked through this contradiction in the same way I am learning to work through all of life's challenges these days.

I surrendered.

I surrendered the potty training to Lucas and his natural inclinations. I surrendered the idea that preschool had to start this fall and at this particular place. I let go of all the "shoulds" and decided to be okay with either outcome. This relieved a lot of stress for me and made it less likely that I would pass along the stress to Lucas, or worse, succumb to the pressure to just break out those rewards and bribe him into compliance.

The funny thing (though not really so funny, as this sort of thing happens every time I surrender) is that as a result of letting go of the stress and surrendering the outcome, a new solution emerged. While not even really thinking about it, it occurred to me that we might just try buying some big-boy underwear. We'd been using Pull-Ups for months now, and while he's adept at taking them off and even changing them himself, he still prefers to use them as his toilet instead of the actual potty chair. I guessed that he might not feel the same way with underwear.

I guessed correctly. Long story short, he loves his big-boy underwear, and doesn't like to pee (or poop) in them. He now runs straight to the bathroom every time he needs to go. It has been a little over a week now, and he's very consistent. We still use Pull-Ups for naps and at night, or if we'll be away from a toilet for long periods of time, but even with the Pull-Ups on as emergency back-up, he'll often still ask to use the bathroom. I'm rather amazed at how simple this was, after all of the fretting of previous months.

Surrender. So simple. So subtle.

I think we're going to make the September potty-training deadline after all.