Having A Mommy Moment

Recently, the youngest has been periodically asking to go to the potty. When he does, we’ve taken him and let him sit for a minute. He rarely does anything, but if he does we dance and sing and all those things you’re supposed to do to help a child realize that going to the potty is just the best thing ever(!) And since the frequency had started to ramp up a little (and by that I mean maybe 2 times a day), I thought, “What the heck, let’s give potty training a try. Maybe he’s ready.”

And so Monday I dug out the underwear and spent the whole day focused on the little one going potty. He managed to go potty in the toilet once out of…I lost count times. Now, I know the first day is always the hardest and so forth, but honestly, the look he was giving me was along the lines of “Ok, this is great and all, I’m all for M&Ms, but really, I have no idea why I’m getting one now and not the other times I come in here.”

So yesterday we started off with it and after cleaning up the fourth mess in about an hour I decided this was silly. He’s not ready. He’s not even remotely interested. And he’s still pretty young, so there’s no reason, really, to try and push it (other than I hate diapers. But really, I’ll change a diaper over cleaning it up off the floor any day.)

I’m not sure what prompted the urgency to try and get him potty trained, honestly. But there it was. Somehow I got it in my head that it needed to be done, and be done NOW. And looking back at the last 36 hours of crazy, I still can’t put my finger on what drove that response…but I’m sure glad that I came to my senses quickly, before either of us was irritated. It got me wondering how often I do this in other areas of my life.

I’ve always been a take-charge kind of gal. My parents were very clear about the fact that they expected us to use the brains God gave us and be problem solvers. And I appreciate that – it’s been a skill that has served me well over the years. But I wonder if I haven’t taken it too far at times, and solved the problem the way that leaps immediately to mind without pausing for a moment to see if there’s some element that needs a saner head to prevail. (I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, other than this potty training fiasco though.) Regardless, I’m going to try to make sure I take a breath before jumping into solution mode from now on.

Do you ever do this, or is it just me?