Like a Wooby, Except Not
While I have decided that we're all just fine paying for diapers for several more years, Mila's daycare teacher is, shall we say, less laid back. I'm truly not going to fight a kid who doesn't want to try out the potty thing, but that lady is.
More power to her.
That means Mila is living in both worlds. At home, she's totally in charge of what she wants to do with her own little booty. I ask if she wants to go often, but I don't push the issue. At school, there's a drill sergeant cheerily and endlessly encouraging her. There's a schedule that has to be followed, a sticker chart, M&Ms, and lots of coaxing. If anybody is wondering which tactic is working better, let me just say my blood pressure is a lot lower than the drill sergeant's. Some kids really do have complete control over their own world. It's almost as if toddlers are real people who can form real opinions ...
ANYWAY.
If you pile both situations together, Mila is hearing a lot of potty talk. In turn, that's the center of a whole lot of what she wants to talk about these days. One conversation earlier this week led to another and somehow I found myself standing in front of toddler underwear at Target.
Given the choice between superheroes, princesses, and the weird pig cartoon thing, Mila picked the plain ones. Seriously. Mila desperately wanted underwear and then passed up the fun characters for solid purple briefs.
Oooookay, then.
So I bought her the underwear. (Which, btw, I can't call "big kid underwear" because Mila insists she is a BABY not a big kid. Like, she'll rip your head off if you call her a "big kid.") The good news is that I didn't expect that she would actually want to wear them. The better news was that I was right about that.
Mila has no interest in wearing the purple underwear.
She just wanted to have them. So she could carry them with her everywhere.
So! Just in case you've spotted us in public in the past few days, there you go. There's the explanation. There is in fact a reason that Mila has been carrying underwear around with her everywhere and it's because she wants to.
It's really not worth arguing with her her about it.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Reader Comments (2)
When our kids were little we heard a saying that went something like, "when boys have potty training issues it's emotional, when girls have issues it's because they don't care." Sure was true for us! Neither girl could be arsed to use the potty regularly before age 3 1/2, and the younger one couldn't be bothered to make it through the night until she was nearly 5. (12 months of me getting up every night at midnight-ish to take her to the bathroom, and it was me because I can go back to sleep easier than my wife can.)
Mila is just about 3? another year of diapers wouldn't surprise me, especially if she's a bit on the smaller side.
I have always hear that you can't rush them. Drill Sgt. needs to settle down.