The little angel has been wearing her princess underwear all day for about three weeks now. She’ll go four days at a stretch with no accidents, then suddenly poop in her underwear for apparently no reason at all. Even more bizarre, it doesn’t seem to bother her. Thank goodness she’s been generally cooperative with the whole process, because if she can walk around with excrement stuck to her legs, than behavior modification is going to continue to be difficult with her. I know I would consider that to be torture, myself. So does Lisa Chiu.

On the flip side of torture (which this mommy is certainly not advocating – don’t you be misunderstanding), there’s bribery. We all know the M&M technique, but I had to laugh out loud at Mommy Needs a Cocktail when she described taking the candy down and slowly eating it in front of her son in an attempt to get him to use the potty.

Though you occasionally hear about a child deciding one day that the diapers were gone forever or a child potty trained at 18 months (like Creative-Type Dad, who I admire but also think is maybe crazy), most of the blogosphere seems to have a similar experience to mine. You start oh, around twoish, with all the “isn’t the potty fun!” and the stickers and the whatever. Your child sits there obediently for a while, maybe even pees, then loses all interest for months at a time. One day, you finally decide enough is enough and put the child in the underwear, then prepare for the free-fall. Ha ha ha

So don’t feel bad, all you potty warriors. Everyone else has the same problems as you.

And now, for something completely different – have you all seen this Japanese potty training video from YouTube?