Guilt Free Potty Training

Do you think it's a myth? I used to, until I discovered the secret to feeling no mommy guilt when potty training. Train someone else's kid! Seriously, it's guilt free. There is no worrying that it's never going to happen and that they will be in diapers forever, there's no worry that they should be trained at their age already, etc. And you don't feel bad or guilty about anything.

I babysit a 2 yr old every other day during the week. She just turned two so she's at the age where she could start showing interest in using the toilet, or she could just care less. Unlike my own kids were at 2 she's interested already.With all three of ours, they really didn't show any interest until they were over two and a half at the earliest. Of course by the time they are two and a half you have already heard from dozens of people about when their kids trained and how it was so much sooner than two and a half. That's when the guilt first hits.

Honest to goodness, just as I was typing that paragraph above, Anna who is completely daytime trained, just looked at me from the middle of the living room and said "I'm peeing on the floor". Sure enough there was a puddle at her feet. Thank goodness for laminate floors, lol. Anyways...

As I was saying... You start to wonder when you have one of those late trainers (or three of those late trainers) if you are doing something wrong (guilt), if there is something wrong with your kid and you have not picked up the cues (guilt) or if you just don't know what the heck you are doing (guilt). Overall my kids weren't incredibly difficult to train, and although they seemed like they were such late trainers, current trends show that age 34 mos is average for girls (almost 38 mos for boys). Beth and Katie were trained before 3, Anna was a little older than 3. That statistic of 34 mos however comes from the Huggies people, so by making parents of 'late trainers' feel better about the age of their non trained child, they are serving their own company's interests, but whatever.

So this potty training half time someone else's kid is a breeze. If she goes, she goes. If she doesn't she doesn't. I don't have to listen to all the well intentioned potty training stories, I don't have to clean up accidents (she's still in diapers full time here), I don't have laundry to do, etc. When she pees in her diaper, I have no guilt whatsoever. Maybe it's because most days she is here I have 4 other kids to worry about as well, so we are not actually focused on the potty training thing. She sometimes tells me she wants to go on the toilet, and we give it a try. Today she's having lots of success, a few days ago, not so much. I don't feel stressed that it should be happening consistently yet, I don't feel guilt that I don't always have the time to sit in the bathroom with her or pick up on all her cues. At the end of the day, as much as I adore her, it's not my 'problem', lol. No guilt, no stress. Hooray for other people's kids!