My Instagram algorithm convinced me I could potty train in 3 days. It was wrong
What our failed potty-training experiment taught me about modern parenting—and knowing when to quit.
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This is the first in Motherly’s new series, Can I Be Honest, where moms share the fears, fails and triumphs we’re afraid to post in the group chat. Because being a mom is hard work, but it’s a lot easier when we can talk about it.
I figured I could potty train my daughter in three days flat, because this is what my Instagram algorithm told me.
For weeks I was served well-designed carousels and talking head Reels that gave me the gist: If the child is ready, take off the diaper and bring her to the potty. Regular intervals, no shame in accidents, no underwear for two days. Day three, you are released from the confines of your house, and your child can enter the world with pants, but commando. Yes, you can do this in just three days.
It seemed easy enough, so on the Thursday before July Fourth, we dove right in.
This isn’t your mother’s potty training manual
I have vague memories of an ad-hoc sticker chart my mom made to potty train us in childhood; I have no memories of potty training being any sort of monumental occasion or event. As far as I can recall, learning to use the toilet just kind of happened in the background of everything else in our lives: birthday parties and dance class and family dinners. When I fact-checked this with my mother, she confirmed that she read no manuals and followed no method. “We didn’t have the internet or access to information like you do now,” she said. “I never bought a book.”
The information we have today—to which she is referring—is abundant, and extends far past the high-engagement posts I see on social media. There are plenty of books—like the ultra popular Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Get It Right—and virtual courses available for purchase from parenting thought leaders like Big Little Feelings and Dr. Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside. This just skims the surface of informed parenting, and for potty training alone. There are also courses that teach you how to be a better parent, courses that teach you how to make your child a better toddler, socks that can track your child’s heart rate, baby monitors that determine the efficiency of your child’s sleep, house managers powered by artificial intelligence that tell you when to get more toilet paper.
All of this is meant to make our lives easier and better, and I don’t doubt that in some way, for some people, it does. But I am already overwhelmed with the tasks involved in work and life. I am also keen on maintaining some sense of self-preservation. On most days, except for the rare few where I get a burst of Nanny McPhee beneath my wings, the last thing I want to do is spend even more time analyzing data and wondering what I could optimize, including potty training my child.
Letting it all hang out
So we took off the diaper and went in blind: no courses, no PDFs, no books, no god above us. It felt in step with the ’90s parenting ethos I’ve embraced since my daughter was born: a low-tech, low-fuss, laid-back approach with rules and restrictions, but a little less overcorrection. It offers a way out of sifting through all the information, and a soft place to land when I don’t have the energy to be the kind of parent I could be if, perhaps, I decided to read more guides.
Days one through three were a rollercoaster. The wins were huge (a crotch grab followed by a concerned Mama…), and the losses were blows to my ego (a nonchalant pee on the kitchen floor). One second I felt like I was on top of the world, watching my daughter master such an incredible thing—a bodily function!—and the next I was kicking myself for not being diligent enough with the clock or getting too lax when someone else, like my husband or mother, was on patrol. I was miserable and stressed. Proud, but still stressed.
On day four of our potty training journey—the first time we left the house—my daughter refused to sit on any toilet and eventually peed in a nice stream down her leg at a friend’s house. We headed home, my toddler pants-less, completely defeated. I was a failure. My own mother watched me in agony. I felt like stomping my feet. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way, I wanted to yell. It was supposed to be… three days and done.
A-ha! I had fallen for the trap, despite never having purchased a copy of Oh Crap. I believed it was possible to program my daughter in three days flat, no ifs, ands, or buts. Wasn’t that the very concept I was rejecting in the first place?
So we called it quits. I didn’t want to send my daughter to daycare diaper-less and liable to spring a link at any moment, and we found it painful to watch her develop a creeping anxiety around pooping.
What I learned from our potty training fail
There are a number of things I could have done differently. Apparently, one ’90s way of potty training is to do it gradually. You remove the diaper at home and keep it on for outings to slowly introduce the concept and ease the stakes. I could have actually bought the PDFs or read the bestselling books, which may have made us more successful in those first three days. I could have followed my daughter around with a potty for a week or more, sticking it out and letting the process run its course without frustration, though I am also eight months pregnant with a limited capacity for processing emotions rationally. Or I could wait and try again when she seems more ready to do it on her own.
Of course none of these is the singular best way. We have to pick what’s best for us, which is the hippest parenting style of them all, I suppose.
Some time later, friends of ours with a daughter the same age decided to go for it. They didn’t leave home for a week. They have a nanny, which makes the whole shebang much easier, and their daughter is content to be inside on a summer day, while mine is not. We met them at the playground with their travel potty on Day 9. It was their first park trip. She had not gone to the bathroom, they said, but at least she was holding it in. This could have been us if we had just stuck it out, I thought. Another friend said her daughter, also the same age as mine, got the fundamentals in three days flat. But now, one month later, she was suddenly pooping all over the house. Again, the chorus echoed: This could have been us. But did I want it to be?
Today, if you were wondering, she does not want to use the potty. She communicates more about it, so it’s possible she will soon. I don’t think I failed. We will try again in the winter—sooner, if she requests.
But I learned a lesson or two. I am looking forward to September, when we can all three match in our diapers—my toddler, my newborn, and me.
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