Rant

I am feeling blah, hampered by unsuccessful potty training.

What's worse? The kid who has repeated accidents? Or the kid who never lets it go? 

Well, I'll tell you my perspective on never letting go:

My son is 3 1/4. We tried potty training when his curiosity first became apparent but that fizzled away. Probably our own fault for being ... Undiligent. Is that a word? 

So here we are again: trying. At first he would sit on the potty every 5 minutes for a few seconds. Then to a crazy every few seconds for about 2 seconds. Just standing and sitting. Nothing produced. We stopped the rewards for sitting only. Then he took to sitting AND peeing! "Great! We thought "we've got this in the bag. I wonder what all the fuss is about?" So we graduated to underwear all day at school too with a diaper for sleeping (nap and nights).  Well, well, well... Then Mr. Smarty Pants decided to be efficient and wait for diaper time to do his business: only peeing at those times he was wearing the diapers - forget the potty!!

So we restricted it to underwear all day (including nap time) and only a diaper at night. 

And so now, he screames bloody murder to sit on the potty, holds everything in from 8am to 8pm when all is lost. Which means he's a brat who cries in agony most of the afternoon, pacing in endless circles holding his peepee eventually becomes so completely distracted and uncomfortable that he can't eat dinner for want of going to bed (a diaper). Brutal. 

We've tried a smattering of rewards, entertainment and distraction. A sweet hand, a firm hand, total frustration (that last one was not an intentional technique) it failed too...

The morning after the second missed dinner the first words uttered out of his mouth at an ungodly early hour for breakfast were: "Can I have some rice and chicken for breakfast?" Poor thing!!

We intensified the daytime potty sittings. He still held it all in. Yep, pretty sure being too diligent on making him sit is wrong too. Today we caved around 7pm and gave him a diaper.  Within 30 minutes he was back to his sweet-tempered self and scarfed down dinner. 

Now what the hell do we do? Back to researching the freaking internet. *sigh...