Embrace the paradox

The delicate negotiations required to get Sacha to stop shitting in his pants have left me with an inverse relationship between soiled laundry and patience. For every shit in the desired location, there are several in the undesirables.

The standard advice for a hard case such as my beloved is to have them make their deposit in a diaper, while in the bathroom. What parenting manuals fail to mention is HOW THE FUCK TO GET THIS TO HAPPEN, because the mere suggestion sends Sacha into prolonged fits of rage.

While this seems like a perfectly reasonable interim step, in our case, the logic falls apart when you consider that a)we are dealing with an irrational being, and b)one of the cardinal rules of diplomacy is never negotiate with terrorists. 

My son is armed and dangerous, and he needs no yellow cake uranium to manufacture his weapon. When I consider all the time we spend strategizing, and carefully calculating our next move, it occurs to me that were you to substitute Iran for Sacha, and weapons of mass destruction for shit, the substance of the discussion would remain unchanged. When I finally succeed in putting toilet training behind, I will be eminently qualified for high level diplomacy, and I intend to submit my resume to the State Department.
 
Some people move forward without looking back, while others have a hard time letting go. Sacha is clearly in the latter camp, and he is mightily conflicted about leaving infancy behind and fully embracing childhood. 

If nothing else, toilet training Sacha has taught me that you're never too young for an existential crisis.

He is clearly going through something, and I empathize with his confusion. Yet he is four, and my third child, and I am done with diapers. Reconciling these two conflicting ideas leaves me in the position of wanting to hold, soothe and spank him, in equal measure.

Dispatches from the potty front

Since my ignominious defeat last summer, several people have asked me if I've had any luck toilet training Sacha. My standard response is, "Hell no, I would have blogged the hell out of that."

In the past few weeks, however, we have made significant progress. I'd like to say that after much reading of parenting manuals and soul searching, we managed to find the key that unlocked the mystery of Sacha, but the truth is, we owe it all to television.

Because there are a few things — eating and shitting being chief among them — that you cannot force another person to do, we have been largely resigned to waiting this out.

My mother, however, in keeping with grandmaternal tradition, is not above bribery. When I had the flu, I heard her ask Sacha what he wanted in exchange for delivering the goods. "Nothing," he replied. When she probed further, promising to get him whatever he desired, he answered, "T.V."

And thus, a plan was hatched. For every pee, he would get to watch five minutes of television.

And after months of failed attempts at behavior modification with stickers, tickets and candy, it worked. In two weeks time, we broke out the underwear.

Would that he would not shit in them, it would have been great.

But we measure progress by each individual's yardstick, and this was undoubtedly a huge leap forward. As Sacha still had no compunction about shitting himself, I was loathe to keep him in a pull-up any longer for fear of encouraging backsliding. As is so often the case with Sacha, he had us between a rock and a hard place.

And so we did the only thing possible, and procured many, many, many more pairs of underwear.

(I try to refrain from dwelling on the utter strangeness of cartoon character embellished foundation garments. It's just plain weird to see the image of Patrick Starr on your child's bum, like a bulls eye, or in our case, an invitation. Because we have been worn down to nubs by now, every morning after Sacha makes his sartorial decision about whether he will swathe his ass in Diego or one of the Wonder Pets, or the Hulk, David and I look at one another conspiratorially and offer this prayer, "Please don't shit on Ming Ming.)

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it say that yesterday morning, as we Jews say with Hanukkah approaching, "Nes gadol hayah sham." A great miracle happened here.

We clapped. We cheered. We called the grandparents. We ate ice cream for breakfast.

But lest we get too cocky, Gabriel offered this sage advice. "You know, Mom, Sacha's probably not done pooping in his underwear."

"I know."

Gabriel continued, "I would say, he'll probably do it three or four more times, and after that, maybe he'll be done."

And true to form, today, Sacha shit himself twice.

Two steps forward, one step back. Or more accurately in this case, one shit forward, two shits back.

A weaker woman would have caved by now

In the past week, I have been verbally abused, bitten, and hit. One night, as I was getting him washed up for bed, Sacha adopted the telltale male stance, and let loose a stream of urine on my bathroom floor, mere steps from the toilet. It was so deliberate that any doubt I may have had that he perhaps he wasn't yet capable of controlling evacuation was erased. I could practically hear him thinking, “Fuck you, Mama.”

To cap it off, on Friday when arrived to I pick him up from camp, he more or less ran screaming from me.

“Sacha, Mom's here!” called a counselor cheerfully.

Sacha turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction.

“Come on, Sacha, Mom's waiting for you!”

Sacha feigned great interest in the sandbox.

She sent someone to retrieve him, and that is when he dug his heels into the mulch, and had to be dragged in my direction. He was so resistant that the counselor had to pick him up and carry him to me, and when placed by my side, he turned on his heel and ran back to the playground.

I take it as a sign of faith in me that camp did not alert DYFS.

A weaker woman would have called the whole thing off by now.

Although I regret that we are locked in an epic power struggle, there is no turning back. In retrospect, on the subject of toilet training my most stubborn beast, there may have been no way of avoiding this. I have dangled many positive incentives, from candy to prizes to privileges, but he cares not a whit for any of them. At this point we have the pole wedged so far up our ass that we cannot take a step in any direction.

So while Sacha may not like me very much right now, I know that he loves me, and at this point in his life, love is preferable.

I have seen a few signs of softening on his part; after a week and a half strike, he finally decided to enjoy himself in the baby pool, and when he is in the mood, he not only pees on the potty, he asks for his Skittle when he's done.

In the mean time, I am contemplating outsourcing the whole affair, and have begun composing my classified ad: Seeking strong willed individual to toilet train adorable stubborn bastard. Must have proven record of success, the patience of a saint, and ample sense of humor. Generous compensation, and all the Skittles you desire.