Potty Drama

So, besides Hibiscus in general and Uganda in general, do you know what else is driving me crazy?  "Potty training."  I put that in quotations not because I have the modern ideas that "training" is too harsh a word and want to call it something gentle like "potty learning."  No, it is because there is no training or learning to be done whatsoever.  Buttercup, like all my other children, is completely capable of putting her effluence in the toilet: she knows how to signal when she needs to go, she knows how to pull down her pants, she knows how to walk to the potty, she knows how to call me, and she EVEN knows how to hold it -- really well.  She is an excellent hold-it-er.  So there is not much education involved.  Within a month of being in our household, she was very dependable at going on the potty whenever she needed to.

Unless she decides not to.  All I can figure is that sometimes it doesn't seem worth her time or effort, and she cheerfully just pees all over herself and walks around in it.

At the orphanage, that's what the younger children did, and they were always sitting in pee.  The slightly older ones went on the lawn, and as they got really organized (yeah right!) they went in the dark little outdoor bathroom.  At that point, Buttercup just wet herself all the time, and for all I know, she may have done that in her previous life, although I kind of suspect not, given how quickly she started using the potty appropriately and proudly.  So maybe this is a leftover from the who-cares orphanage life.

But I'm sick of it!  Maybe if she were my only child, I would have the time and energy to empathize with the difficulties in her life that have led her to pee all over herself and not care.  Maybe if she were my oldest child, I would be so proud of watching her progress towards dryness that I would be happy to hold her hand down that rocky road.  Who knows; maybe I am just not a very potty-patient mother.  But with all the other chaos in my current life, I am out of patience with children who are perfectly capable of waiting and peeing in the potty, and yet choose not to.

This afternoon we had the following conversation.  I was washing dishes, and she was playing with a towel in the kitchen near me.  She was singing, but out of the blue said, "I don' need go sou-sou" (which is the local word that we have ended up using).  She doesn't speak very clearly, so I asked "do you need to go sou-sou?" -- no -- "do you need to go potty?"  She looked up at me and widened her eyes and went "NOOO-OH" in that "du-uh" voice that is particularly annoying to parents.  So I put down my dish and dried my hands and flipped up her dress and felt her undies -- no surprise here, they were wet.  I said we were going to the potty, and she did the duh/no again and tried to run away from me.  I grabbed her and started to carry her to the bathroom, and she kicked and fought me, and then I slipped in the giant puddle of pee and we both fell on the floor.

I was mad.

Maybe I'm a bad mom.  We're not supposed to get mad at our kids for having potty accidents.  That's what punitive parents do, and then it makes kids afraid of going potty, or shameful about themselves, or have some whole Freudian complex or something.  But it's maddening.  Even when you can understand why, it's maddening.  It's frustrating enough when the little one is playing with the bigger ones, and you know that they didn't want to leave the game and missing out on something is such a huge disaster at that age; you can kind of understand, as you try and teach a new logic.  But when the child is half-bored and standing by herself on your just-mopped floor, and still doesn't bother to walk the dozen steps to the bathroom or speak to the mother a few feet away, and just pees all over, it's REALLY maddening.

Which happened not twenty minutes later.  20 minutes after a giant screaming fit because she said she didn't need to go potty, and I said she needed to sit on it anyways, and she peed in the potty, and after the screaming was done we talked about not peeing in our undies any more.  Actually, I hadn't even changed her into new undies yet, she was just standing there, and I noticed there was liquid running down her legs.  I hadn't changed her into new undies because she is going through all three children's undies like wildfire, after the difficulties with getting the laundry clean in the first place.  We are living the simple life here; I just do not have the logistics to deal with six clothing changes a day!  (A couple of those are for meals and mud, too!)


This is a discussion without a point, or maybe just without an ending.  I don't have a practical solution, and I have tried a bunch of them:  Alternating with peeing on the floor multiple times in an afternoon, she will go for long periods holding it appropriate amounts of time, so I doubt it's something physical.  She usually has good capacity, so putting her on the potty every 30 minutes doesn't help; she just cries "sou-sous no come!" and they don't, and it's even more crying on the potty.  I praise her like mad whenever she goes successfully.  We talk about what it feels like to hold it and what it feels like to pee.  We put on special clothes that she doesn't want to wet.  The big kids scold her -- that's not mother-enforced, but it's natural peer pressure.  I have calmly had her clean it up and change herself.  None of it seems to matter; she still just randomly pees all over things half the time, and then switches over to being totally dependable.  Some parents' philosophy would say that she's just not ready yet and to put her back into diapers, and she encourages this idea.  However, she is THREE YEARS OLD (in a culture where children are diaper-free as young toddlers) AND she has successfully and consistently gone in the potty for MONTHS.  I feel like going back to diapers is just allowing this state of mind... whether it is laziness for pottying properly, or a disrespect of self to sit around stinky and disgusting.  I understand that it probably came from the orphanage, and it doesn't mean she's a bad girl or lazy, but the attitude needs to be left behind at the orphanage.  My personal instinct is that putting her in diapers full-time would be subconsciously agreeing that she's too lazy or incompetent or dirty to use the potty like a regular little girl.


Or maybe I just need to wait out her behavior, and change my own reaction to it.  Maybe I just need to stop allowing myself to be frustrated when she pees on things, and just pretend I'm parenting a baby again.  Or just turn my brain off and hum a song while I plop her little bum on the toilet and change her clothes.  Easier said than done!


So I don't have the answers right now.  I write this, so maybe in a few months I can look back and remember that this was a challenge that we overcame.  Or maybe I won't be able to believe that I got so upset by something so minor and not even about me.  Or maybe so other parents can read this and feel like they're not the only one getting mad about potty accidents.  Or maybe to comment on the little details, the not-even-worth-mentioning problems with being an abandoned child and living a life like Buttercup's.