Please help me not kill my daughter: a chapter in potty training.

Things you should know:

1. I have successfully potty trained a child already. He’s 4, been doing it exactly a year. No regression, no night time accidents. When he decided to pee, poop came shortly thereafter. He is by far the most difficult child I have ever met, and he’s mine, and he figured this shit (pun intended) out.
2. As I type, my 3-year old daughter is locked in a playpen in the baby’s room for three reasons: to avoid further contamination by feces throughout the rest of the house, to keep her from the reward that is having such a tremendously awesome bedroom that she has, and to keep me from pulling her pigtails out…or worse.
3. She has become increasingly defiant. I have asked her ‘why’, the infamous question 3-year olds coin at this age and she is all too eager to answer ‘cause I don’t want to’…whatever that means.

What we have tried:

1. Praising the good, ignoring the bad
2. Special days JUST for her, apart from her siblings
3. Potty charts
4. Incentives- panties, ice cream restaurant Groupons, the works…
5. Yelling
6. A light spanking (don’t judge…)
7. Time out
8. Just assuming she knows how, leaving her in panties…freaking out with applause and gifts the moment she pees in the potty…
9. Letting her go nude
10. Letting her go on a potty seat with her favorite character
11. Letting her go on a potty seat ON the toilet
12. Letting her go right on the big girl potty
13. Potty parties
14. Taking toys away
15. Not letting her sleep in her own bed
16. Shame
17. Telling her each of her other friends that do it
18. Promising special trips to various places to do various things she loves
19. Rationally explaining things
20. Threatening
21. Plying her to at least go poop in the diaper
22. Begging her to at least tell us when she has to go
23. Making her clean it up herself
24. Holding her hand, holding her and spending close to an hour encouraging her while on the potty
25. Giving her space
26. Giving her books or activities to do whilst on the potty
27. Making going to the potty a game
28. Ignoring the process, making light of it
29. Showing her how WE go to the potty
30. Talking about it
31. Not talking about it…
32. Elmo videos
33. Huggies videos
34. Reading 12 different potty books
35. And so much more….

Things we have yet to try:

1. Rubbing her nose in it
2. Duct taping her to the toilet for extended periods of time
3. Public shame
4. Serious physical violence

I get that this is a pivotal point in any child’s life. I get that disrupting the process can lead to some Freudian flub for eternity and she may end up delayed in some emotional aspect later on if we’re too pushy; but ignoring it is futile, because it’s past the point of ‘eff it, let her wear diapers’…because she takes them off, wipes herself with the laundry and other various pieces of furniture and replaces her soiled pants with fresh ones that are also now shit stained to match the drapes and carpets and bedspreads.

She pees like a champ. She does it all the time. Never misses a drop at school. We’ve even gone back to putting her in pull-ups because the moment she gets home, she uses our home like a giant toilet. She is very sneaky and the moment any of us get involved with something, she sneaks into a corner into her room and unleashes a big one and then proceeds to paint with it. Ever see Quills? Yeah…

She’s a smart girl. She’s 3. She smirks when we reprimand her. She’s even accidentally pooped in the potty and we showered her with attention, praise, toys. I’m at the end of my rope. She’s now cowering in the pack-n-play while I try desperately not to unleash anymore fury at her for this constant, what seems like plain out defiance.

We’ve been through the ringer. She cries. She apologizes. She swears she will never do it again. She says she knows that poop goes in the potty. She knows… We all end up crying and swaying and hugging after these episodes.

What do I do? I have a baby here and frankly, short of boiling the house, I’m not quite sure how to sanitize and protect everyone from the stool. Do I duct tape the diaper on? Do we send her away to potty lessons? Do I take her to a shrink and see what the underlying problem is? Do we chalk it up to shitty parenting? I have a sneaking suspicion this won’t last forever and I couldn’t imagine her going to high school in a diaper… but am I missing something here? Do I Dexter up my house with plastic sheets and put her in a hazmat suit? Do we put scratch mittens on her fingers so she can’t pull her pants off? Do we keep her outside with the dog? Boot camp?

Advice beyond the traditional means would be very helpful. Please read my list of ‘have dones’ before offering… If one more person suggests a sticker chart or potty party, I’m going to freak out.

Frustrated,

Sami