The Biggest Potty Training Mistake I Ever Made

If you are potty training a child then you know there is really so much that could go wrong. But there is one thing that is the biggest mistake of all and most moms make this mistake at least once. It’s inevitable. Even thinking about it now, I feel guilty and ashamed.

If you haven’t started potty training yet, you will tell yourself that you won’t make this mistake. I know you will because I did too. Or if this is your second or third time around, you will know better and try to stop yourself but it will happen anyway. You will be distracted one day (because distraction is the name of the game in motherhood) and you will make the biggest potty training mistake.

I cringe when I think of it with my poor sweet little 2 and a half year old second baby Madeline. She was running around playing with her sister and I was cooking or cleaning in the kitchen. She ran up to me and said she had to go potty. I told her I would help her in “just a second.”

Then I kept doing what I was doing, hoping I could finish whatever task I was doing and then take her to the potty.

And that quickly is how I made my mistake. When you are potty training, you learn to drop everything the moment your child says they have to go potty. There are just learning what those feelings in their body mean and usually when they say they have to go potty they mean “right now.”

I took a minute too long. I walked into the bathroom to see tiny Madeline trying her hardest to get her pants down and peeing on herself and the ground.

It breaks my heart to say it. Her accident was my fault. I’m not being sarcastic or exaggerating here. It was my fault that I didn’t help her right away and she had an accident.

It stuck with her too. Children are so delicate when they are potty training. Their egos are so fragile. They are so proud when they pee pee on the potty and feel ashamed when they have an accident.

For days and weeks after that she would talk about when she pee peed on the floor. I knew she remembered it and felt bad about it. And when she remembered, so did I and I felt bad about it even more.

So even though I know you will be distracted at some point and you will be tempted to tell your child you will help them in “just a minute” – try not to make this mistake. Drop everything the minute they say they need to go potty and be there to help them. Maybe, just maybe, you can avoid the biggest potty training mistake you could possibly make.