My Parenting Epiphany

I hope I’m not alone when I have not a clue how to parent. This is a learning experience for me where even when I’ve done my research and combined it with the collective wisdom of experts and veterans, turns out I studied for a completely different kid. I worry that I’m inadvertently messing up my children; many of my prayers are asking for mercy and strength because I’m at the end of my abilities. Recently I’ve reached a turning point in the power struggle that is raising my kids. I’m still working on it but there’s hope! Just wanted to document the journey.

My daughter has been fully potty-trained for years, and doesn’t wet the bed at night—just a string of daytime accidents once in a while. It’s been going on and off for months now. We’ve tried everything at home from scheduling, keeping a calendar with potty prizes if she stays dry for a certain number of days, reminding her to go when we see her trying to hold it so she can keep playing or watch a show, having her clean her mess, canceling play dates, taking things away, giving up and cleaning her up without a word, punishing her for lying and hiding soiled underwear… Most recently I ended up dropping everything in the middle of nap time because I got calls from school saying she needed a change of clothes from having an accident. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, and I was getting tired. It happened right before a big field trip she had been looking forward to for weeks, and I had to be there in 15-20 minutes so she could make it. I had just spent an hour putting the baby down to nap, and I was supposed to be starting to put my toddler down for a nap. I wasn’t about to wake both of them up to run this annoying errand. Thankfully our neighbors/friends were able to sit with the kids. I promised myself I would remain calm and not blow up on her, that her teacher seemed really chill about it and I should try to be understanding. I came home from delivering clean clothes to her at school to find 3 soiled, nasty pairs of underwear that been in there for at least a week and weren’t even salvageable at this point, and the fury washed over me with a vengeance. I told my husband, and she got a severe reprimand but the problem seemed to become more important than being kind to our daughter.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

I realized that I may be causing her anxiety. I expect a lot from my children—perhaps too much. Even strangers tell me that my daughter is always in a hurry, and I feel responsible because I’m the exact same way and often sharing my frustrations and worries with her. The worst days are when I wake up late and she’s been playing all morning instead of getting ready, and then I’m delirious, rushing and yelling and upset that she didn’t listen when I told her to get ready, telling her I don’t have time to take her to school today so she cannot miss that bus. My daughter was in such a hurry to get to the bus that she almost got run over one morning as she darted across the street without looking. She also almost got run over by the bus when she missed it and tried to chase it as it started to drive away. My ill preparedness was putting my daughter in danger. I should be out there with her. Why didn’t I put aside all my plans for the day to make sure she knew I could take her to school and it’s all right if she misses the bus especially since I wasn’t there to help her get ready in the morning?

It became clear to me that I was a major part of the problem, and now I needed to change to do a better job at this Mom thing for my little girl. After much pondering and praying, my approach is now: cut some slack, give more support, and make a bigger effort.

Cut Some Slack

In the past I’ve been more concerned with following through and giving tough love because I thought it was teaching my daughter a lesson and making her responsible. Instead, it was putting unreasonable responsibility on her that actually belonged to me. I let my anger and frustration be more important than my kid’s feelings, and that was just teaching her to fear and hide her mistakes—the perfect storm of creating more anxiety. Now I know that perfection with its unrealistic expectations and stolen joy is what I should avoid, and what I need to follow through on is teaching that it’s okay to make mistakes, over and over and over again. This requires patience I don’t currently have, but will pray for all day every single day.
Here is an example of cutting slack. When we first received this outfit in the mail, I disliked the quality and fit and while on the quest for perfection in her capsule wardrobe started a return. The clothing sat there unworn still wrapped in plastic in a box, an annoying reminder for months because I never took the time to print the return labels, traipse over to the post office, and send them back. I stewed and resented the box, but when I had my epiphany I looked at that box and decided that even though it’s not perfect we should still enjoy it. She looks absolutely adorable in this outfit—I no longer care that the bottoms won’t fit her for very long because today my little girl has a happy smile from new clothes and that means they are perfect enough.
Realize that homework isn’t done or hair looks crazy or she forgot to turn her homework in? No need to freak out. She’ll catch it next time.

Give More Support

Most people say to have your child clean their own mess, to not enable or coddle them in potty accidents since it will perpetuate because being dirty doesn’t bother them and they know they can keep doing it without any disturbance or negative consequences. However, I know my daughter feels sad and humiliated when she has an accident; instead of participating in school activities she has to stay in the nurse’s office and call me to bring a change of clothes. I realized that experiencing her accident is punishment enough and she didn’t benefit from me telling her I was disappointed. What she needed was support.
When we found the soiled underwear our daughter had been hiding, we told her that she needed to change this behavior because the underwear were so soiled we had to throw them away, and she would need to go potty before she ran out of underwear because we would not buy her new ones.
Rather than motivating her to stay clean and dry, I think it just added more pressure and now she would be afraid of having to go to school without underwear if she messed up—which, of course, just fed the anxiety that causes her to have accidents. After discussing with my husband on what I think was going on, I went out and bought a pack of the cutest underwear we could afford. Before I presented them to our daughter, I pulled her in and asked her if we could talk.

​Our conversation went something like this: She is my daughter, and I will love her whether she goes potty or needs to try again. I am her Mommy and I am here for her. I hope that I can be a good listener so that she can tell me how she is feeling, what is going on in her life, when something is bothering her, or when she needs help. If she tells me it is an accident, I believe her—I will always believe her. I promise that I will not get mad and I will help clean her up because she doesn’t have to be alone in this. We will learn and figure out the potty thing together. I don’t want her to have to worry about running out of underwear—those are for her, and if she runs out of those I will go and get more. We will put a change of clothes and clean underwear in her backpack so that if she has an accident at school, even if Mommy can’t come because no one can watch the babies she will not have to be dirty… She hugged me several times so tightly and cried into my shoulder with relief, telling me she loved me. My poor baby was trying to overcome this challenge alone; not anymore.
We reinstated potty prizes. She picked them all out herself, and is working really hard to earn them. She chose to go 10 days accident-free before earning her prize. We made a potty chart together so she can see her progress and feel pride in her accomplishments. She chose special colorful gummy-bear shaped stickers for her chart. Having non-punishing responses has really helped our efforts.

Make a Bigger Effort

What happened on the days from the soiled laundry? They were really rushed mornings to get out the door to school with me getting upset that she couldn’t find her jacket or she didn’t have socks because I didn’t do laundry, and they were rushed evenings after she came home with pushing her to do homework and reading assignments, trying to get her to eat dinner, and trying to get the kids to bed. Probably the phrase I most often told her was, “Hurry up!” or “Come on!”
Our lives are busy, but my kids shouldn’t have to suffer because I didn’t fulfill my responsibilities, so I looked for ways to slow down and be prepared. I needed to wake up earlier and go to bed sooner. I found a setting on my phone that has changed my life—”Bedtime”. It asks you a few questions about how much sleep you need, when you would like to wake up, how far ahead you’d like to be reminded to go to bed, and then it has the most wonderful music to ease you up in the morning. Even when I’m dead tired from having been up all night with a fussy baby, I hear that alarm and I am uplifted enough to start my day again.
To make getting ready in the morning easier, I had my daughter pick out her outfit before bedtime when she puts a sticker on her potty chart. Now I’m right there with her in the morning, able to make breakfast while she gets ready. When our Bus Alarm goes off, I help her get her shoes and jacket on, tell her to wave at us at the window from downstairs, and remind her that she’s not late so please walk don’t run, and look both ways when crossing the street so that she’s safe.
Being prepared takes work, but it lessens rushing from one thing to the next. Getting laundry, dishes, baths, naps, homework, and meals done on time like a well-oiled machine is very hard work. It’s worth the effort when my kids know they can depend on me and have everything they need to do their responsibilities.
Cutting some slack has helped me to take my time and not rush my daughter. Instead of reminding her to eat faster, now I’m listening to her special thoughts about everything from observations she’s made or things she finds funny. She has so much imagination, it’s no wonder she needs that extra time to share part of herself with me.

​We had a special “Mommy-Daughter date” the day I told her about this new Potty Plan of ours. It was a day I said yes to everything she wanted to do that normally I wouldn’t say yes to. We went to Target (which I avoid like the plague because I can’t control my spending there) for potty prizes and had lunch together at a nearby café we’d never been to before. We had somewhere we needed to be right after but I rescheduled it rather than taking her away from coloring her menu at our lunch. She told me it was the best day of her life.