pathetic potty training parental

I FUMED inside my head as I cleaned poop streaks from the shower walls and doors this morning. My son Elijah turned 3 on the 13th of July. We half heartedly attempted to potty train him when he was just past his 2nd birthday and it proved, in less than 3 days, to be a colossal waste of time. He picked up on it just fine as we showered him with candy, cookies, UN watered down juice (a very rare thing for him, indeed!), new toys, sticker chart and briefs with his all time favorite faux sentient being, Elmo. He cared little about his Cookie Monster undies or even the ones with Grover or Big Bird. He only ever wanted to wear Elmo. We were given advice (of course we were!) to NOT put him in pull ups when we were REALLY buckling down to train him. Pull ups, great as they are after the fact (in case of absent minds in public) still wick away moisture and mask the feeling of messiness that a child needs to become familiar with. I cringed, not once or twice but repeatedly at the thought of scrubbing poo from my couch cushions, rugs, bed sheets, chairs and wherever he would be sitting to discover that "messy" feeling. In the end, when he was two, it just didn't end up mattering. He wasn't able to figure out the coordination to pull down his own underpants. Few accidents were had on the rug or couch or anywhere else. I mentioned before, he had plenty of incentive to remember that pee pee and poo poo go INNNNNNNNN the potty. I think I cleaned 2 puddles off the living room rug, one off the couch (it wasn't much of a puddle) and a few off the pergo flooring (my all time favorite spot for him to become familiar with that "messy" feeling). He would scream back to the bathroom yelling, "pee pee mommyyyyy!". I'd race back with him and help him pull his underpants down. He'd sit, pause, strain.....and then the wonderful sound of a stream hitting the bottom of his little toilet. Music to our ears! I'd jump up from my crouching position, hoot and holler, turn a few circles...you know, put on a real show for the kid to let him know how excited he was hoping I would be. I WAS excited. Maybe he was really catching on. The first day passed with 4 accidents, the 2nd day with only 2 accidents and the last day I released him into the wild. Be free young child. You have now officially become part of....those of us who can relieve ourselves on our own with no one else's help. The right of passage was getting FULL TIME usage of his new "up up Elmo" toy. We saved it, those first couple days, for when he would use the potty successfully. I had full confidence that he was now graduated from diaper-hood and deserved sole rights to the toy. At the end of day 3 I made an executive decision to postpone ALL further potty training attempts for at least 6 months. Elijah hadn't a clue how to pull his underpants down. I showed him countless times only to receive back a reaction that told me he simply wasn't ready. Now, he still went to the bathroom on the potty...but fully clothed. Sweat pants, tighty whities....the whole bit.
Our second attempt came this past spring and Elijah was successfully fully trained in just 3 days! I beamed from ear to ear with accomplishment and satisfaction in my work of art (a child who could no relieve himself on his own without anyone else's help). He went nearly 3 months with few accidents. He was all grown up at 2 and a half in the department of... relieving himself without anyone else's help.


Then we moved.


Life is starting to calm down, finally. Elijah stays busy playing with his new friends and thoroughly enjoys having his own HUGE backyard fully equipped with his own 25 dollar blow up pool from the Walmart and his sun faded Little Tykes climber.
Things are falling in to place. This, among other reasons, is why I do NOT understand why he chooses, on a daily basis for some stretches in time, to mess himself. On many occasions it will be in plain sight of me or his daddy (when daddy is home). He'll be playing, doing whatever, having a grand old time. He stops, looks at me contemplatively.....and then there it is. That all too familiar smell, or puddle forming below his feet. Today was the most recent offense. We had gone on a walk early this morning. We got home and I sat down to feed Judah his breakfast before his morning nap time. Elijah was in and out of the room, here and there, playing and running. I don't even remember what happened. He did something naughty, and I explained what it was, we discussed it and I asked him to stop. He left the room without responding. I finished feeding Judah and loaded the boys up to clock the distance I had walked. I loaded Judah and went around to buckle Elijah. As I leaned forward to grab his buckle he stared at me, head pressed back in to his seat. I am so familiar with that look. It can't lie. I asked him if he pooped his pants and he squinted his eyes into slits. "No." I asked again. "No". I pulled him out of the van and pulled the back of his shorts out to take a peak. "You pooped" I informed him. "Yeah" was the reply. "But I just asked you and you said no, twice. Why?" I looked at him, confused. "My donts know." he said. We went back in the house. I took his shoes off and put him in the shower. I handed him 5 or 6 wipes, shut the shower door and asked him if he knew what to do. "yeah" he said, "clean up my own mess." (a well established rule in our house) He griped and whined for a while, wiping as best he could and then fell quiet. I listened....nothing....then, "vroooom vroom!" "Bang bang. Oh no!!!! No no." I walked in to find him flailing back and forth while holding on to the shower doors with his poop smeared hands.
The rest is easy to imagine. I showered him off, scrubbing his messed skin with my bare hands. I handed him a towel and sprayed the shower down with disinfectant. This has happened three times now. It is seriously infuriating to me that he chooses to poop his pants. I told Joshua this morning that I'm not at the end of my rope with potty training, I just don't have any rope left. I've asked Elijah on several occasions why he has chosen to poop or pee his pants and he, nearly every time, informs me that it's because he's mad at me for asking him to do something he didn't want to do or to stop doing something that is naughty. He gets mad, hides, and poops. It's his way of controlling the situation I suppose, when he's mad that he's not allowed to break the rules.
So, it's back to square one. Toys, stickers, junk food PACKED with sugar - rewards rewards rewards. Joshua told me that the frontal lobe of the brain is where we house our ability to understand cause and effect. Though there are MANY things for which he FULLY understands cause and effect, this apparently is having a harder time sticking. The "rewards" center of the brain (as my husband put it) is developed MUCH earlier. We enter the world with this clicking along at a healthy speed. Newborns scream as loud as their tiny lungs allow, to get what they want - food, comfort, a change of diaper, mommy (whatever it may be). Thats why they cry. To get what they want. Keeping that in mind, we will continue with the theme of cleaning up one's own mess, but it will be paired, much to Elijah's delight, with hoards of candy, cookie, sticker and toy rewards as a pat on the back for putting things where they belong....INNNNNN the potty! (I know. A run on sentence.)

Parenting doesn't come as naturally to me as I had hoped. I really have a hard time being a mother. I LOVE it, don't doubt that for a second. But it is, without a doubt, the hardest job I can imagine having to do. Sometimes I wish I had a part time job to get away from this full time job (a feeling shared by many of my peers, I'm sure). I suppose the fact that I thought I had potty trained Elijah in 3 days only to be STILL working on it 6 months later makes me feel like somewhat of a failure at my job. I'm not completely secure in my ability to parent my children (though I am blessed to know that God chose ME specifically to parent them), so it comes as a hard blow when something like this doesn't take successfully, for months! This child truly has a mind of his own and the will of an ox (a will that is much often opposite of mine) and I look forward to the day, with great anticipation, that he decides he is ready to buckle down and take the time necessary to relieve himself without anyone else's help.