We’ve been trying the last ten days to potty train Miranda. Eleanor is completely out of diapers and she’s dry at night as well. Miranda has been trying to copy Eleanor and asks to use the potty at school; she’s also jealous of the attention that Eleanor gets. We did a half-hearted effort last weekend, so she never really got it, and she spent all week at school having accidents. Today we tried a full-on effort, but she still kept having accidents. She’s only ever peed in the potty once at home, and she’s had probably up to twenty accidents. And the one time she peed in the potty, I was forcibly holding her down so she couldn’t get off the potty.
I’ve opted to just give up and put her back in diapers. Bernard thinks we should ask my mom if she wants to give it a try, so I’ll probably give her a call tonight. My mom prides herself on her ability to raise small children; she says my sister and brother were potty-trained by 14 months, and I was trained by 18 months, but I’m highly skeptical. Bernard and I are exhausted with the potty-training. It involves a highly concerted effort from both of us, because one person has to leave the house early with one twin, while one of us trains the other twin. Since I’m the trainer, I haven’t left the house in two weeks, except to go to work, so I’m feeling extremely cooped up. Also, we haven’t been able to do anything fun as a family since every free day has been spent doing potty-training.
On the other hand, maybe our expectations are too high because Eleanor was completely potty-trained in two days. Jo Frost, the Supernanny on TV, thinks that two weeks is realistic for achieving potty training. Still, the thought of continuing with Miranda makes me feel extremely depressed. I also feel guilty because I’ve been pretty harsh with Miranda. She doesn’t get upset when she pees in her pants, so I make sure she’s upset. We’ve tried everything from rubbing her cold, wet underwear on her legs, to forcing her to sit in her puddle of pee for fifteen minutes, to yelling at her. She cries briefly, but then goes on as if nothing’s happened.
Anyway, I’m not sure what to do. Should we continue to plug on with Miranda, or put her in diapers and try again in two months? I’m worried that this will affect her self-esteem, since Eleanor constantly lords it over her that she’s pee-peed in the potty, that she has dry pants, that she’s a big girl. Eleanor also says to Miranda, “You have wet pants. You pee-peed in your pants. Wet pants are bad.” Also, they’ve accomplished every single other milestone within two weeks of each other (rolling over, sitting, crawling, standing, walking, talking), so it upsets me that they’re going to be far apart on potty-training. On the other hand, having Miranda continually fail and get disapproval from us isn’t helping either.
Here’s a picture of Miranda looking at the potty-training book. She loves the pictures in it, and flips through it on her own every day.
Neither of my kids was really trained until just before they were three. There was a very long prodrome of about a year with sporadic interest in using the toilet, then the actual training was pretty quick and involved very little pain once the kid was ready. Night training we let happen much later and very naturally, so we were using a Pull-up at night for a good number of months after the day training had happened. Perhaps we could have forced the issue earlier and saved a lot of diapers (an admirable goal, certainly), but it seemed to work out okay this way. You have the unusual complication of having one fully trained and lording it over the other one, but I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t hurt anything to just let Miranda stay in diapers a bit longer, then try again when she’s more receptive (I’m not recommending taking as long as mine, necessarily, but at least a couple of months like you suggested). And anyway, are you glad you’ve only got ONE in diapers now? Perhaps Eleanor will quiet down with the comments when things calm down a little. That being said, my sister had great luck with M&M’s as rewards for her daughter, and my mother-in-law had great luck with my Eleanor giving her quarters. The regimented potty times at the daycare and heaps of praise at home seemed to do the trick for Owen. There was a funny bit in one of the Girlfriend’s Guides to x books regarding training. The author has four kids, and she said she worked really hard and tried all the tricks to get her first two kids to train. Then for the third and fourth she didn’t do any of that and just let them want to, and they trained at exactly the same time as the first two had “in spite of [her] interference”. Doesn’t explain the dichotomy in your twins, of course, but perhaps Miranda’s just on a different trajectory. Anyway, best of luck, and remember to keep enjoying your girls even during this time!