Teenager Meets Toddler

(Image credit: Raised by my Daughter)

3.5 Years:
"Um, Mama. I peed in the hallway just now, and--"
"Honey!!! WHY did you pee in the hallway?"
"Because I'm a human being and I'm not perfect, MOM!!!"
 
If I had to label just one moment in motherhood that truly rocked my world, it was this one. Here I had a child who was suddenly a mouthy teenager— but also, somehow, a normal three-year-old who still wet her pants.

I’ll never forget the way she looked when she said it. The eye roll. The glare of utter defiance. The foot stomp. I half expected her to go to her room and chat with a friend about how parents are so mean and unfair. I was nearly a decade away from buying her first bra, but still somehow facing the attitude of a teenager.

Toddlerhood is a lot like adolescence, and there’s a reason both are considered to be so difficult. They both mark moments of transition—toddlerhood as the stage between infancy and childhood, and adolescence as the stage between childhood and adulthood. Children caught in these stages have minds and bodies that constantly tell them that they’re ready for independence, but we, as their parents, know that they’re not. The result, of course, is that they constantly challenge our authority, until the precious and long-awaited moment when the once-toddler walks into kindergarten, or when the once-teenager graduates college.

I’ve learned since that day that my daughter is what people commonly call “twice exceptional.” She is both gifted and has a significant disability. Now, this doesn’t pose much of a problem, besides making it difficult to meet her educational needs in school. But, at three and a half, it meant that she was not developmentally ready to use the potty full-time, but had a bright and inquisitive mind that told her she was fiercely independent and had no flaws beyond just being a “human being” and “not perfect.” (Mom!)

That’s one of the biggest drawbacks of having a 2E kid—toddlerhood becomes almost insurmountably difficult as the child struggles between feeling smart and independent, and actually being, developmentally, still very much a baby. The same pattern of difficulty tends to follow the child throughout life, and tends to make the teenage years a catastrophe.

People tend to think I’m joking when I say that I dread my daughter’s teen years. While I know that they will, in many ways, be wonderful and magical and full of delights and surprises, I am under no illusions about how difficult they will be. The same child who stomped her foot and declared that she was a human being and not perfect, will one day be fourteen and angry that she isn’t allowed to date a 20-year-old or go on a trip with friends or stay by herself over the weekend. And it’s going to be rough.

But worth every minute.

Because I have kidneys!

3 Years:
“Why did you pee in your pants again?”
“Because of my kidneys!”

One of the biggest frustrations we had with potty-training came from the gulf between what my daughter could understand and what my daughter could do. Way before she was actually able to sit down on a toilet and use it correctly, she would talk about the fine details of how the human body produces and eliminates waste. It was funny and cute on one hand… and maddeningly frustrating on the other.

For several months, between her third birthday and three-and-a-half, every time I demanded an explanation for an avoidable potty accident, she would desperately plead, “Because of my kidneys!” or “Because of my bladder!” or “Because of my colon!”

I couldn't get angry at her, because every time I started to, I would be interrupted with the look of confusion and innocence in her sparkly brown.  I could tell, just looking at her wide-eyed, startled expression, as she struggled to peel wet panties off her bottom, that she was just as confused as I was. She didn’t pee in her pants. It was something that her kidneys and bladder did without asking her, and it was something she just couldn’t quite grasp or control. There was also no way to argue her logic. Why would I punish her for something her body did on its own?

Even after she was potty-trained, the occasional accident would arise and get blamed on the internal organs that filter out waste and then expelled it. As frustrating as it was, it was an excuse I was almost always willing to accept. Years down the road, I can’t say that I have any regrets about more or less accepting this explanation, until she was able to sort out how to use the potty the right way.

An Article Called...

2.5 Years: “Mama, you should write an article called, ‘My Baby Pooped on the Floor of the Living Room Just Now.’”

Shit happens. And, when you have a toddler, it happens in the most inconvenient places, at the most inconvenient times—for example, on the floor, in the living room, with a deadline for work approaching in just twenty minutes.

My daughter had learned that, if I seemed really absorbed in something, it was because I was writing. There wasn’t much way around it. From her perspective, work was something that Mommy was constantly tied up in, but—at least, much of the time—I was writing about her, or something having to do with her. It wasn’t uncommon for her, after doing something cute or funny, to later suggest that I write an article about it. Frequently, I would.

Unfortunately, the day came when a suggestion for an article preceded my discovery of something that she had done. And, at the time, it wasn’t really very funny at all. I told her that I would not write an article about my baby pooping on the floor, since I had plenty of deadlines whooshing by me already, but that maybe—just maybe—one day I would retell the story and actually think it was funny and pleasant instead of just cringe-inducing.

I have to admit that, predictably, three years down the road, it is kind of funny.

Blame the Cat

2.5 Years: “Pookie pooped in my diaper.”

My best friend, known to my daughter as Aunt Sarah, has a cat named Pookie who, for many years, was the subject of my daughter’s constant attention. She drew pictures of Mama Pookies with baby Pookies. She named two toy cats Pookie. She played with, snuggled, and petted an invisible version of Pookie. And, apparently, when she did something bad, Pookie was to blame. Even for the messes in her diapers.

There were many times that my daughter would grow quiet for a few suspicious moments, then toddle to me and tell me very matter-of-factly, “Um. Pookie pooped in my diaper.”

If I corrected her, and said that she had in fact pooped in her own diaper, she would respond argumentatively, sometimes with a foot stomp, declaring that Pookie was to blame. When asked how Pookie traveled four hundred miles, climbed into her diaper, defecated there, and then vanished without a trace with no one noticing, my daughter’s only response was another firm declaration of “Pookie did it.”

Pookie eventually must have gotten in the habit of using the litter box, because at some point—miraculously around the time that my daughter started consistently using her princess potty—the mysterious poop in my toddler’s diapers ceased its regular appearances. I am very grateful that Pookie eventually decided that there were better places to poop than in the pants of a toddler hundreds of miles away.