Emily is a smart child. Most parents make that statement about their children but Emily is scary smart. This is especially clear when she is around other children her age. Most three-year olds don’t carry on conversations about the nature of God and how He can heal Daddy’s back. Most three-year olds don’t understand death and certainly don’t cry about the bugs modern agriculture kills with pesticides.
She is wonderful.
For all her intelligence however her emotional level is nowhere near as advanced. We do try hard to keep her a little girl for as long as possible but it is difficult. I often forget her age and sometimes my haste to help her reach her potential runs smack into unintended consequences.
Last week I decided to help Emily with her last potty training step – staying dry while sleeping. I wondered if she was just being lazy in the morning and out of habit relieving herself instead of getting out of bed. To test this I told her she would earn a dollar if she stayed dry. Emily was ready for the challenge and by the time I explained the rules she was already making plans on how she would spend her millions.
I didn’t know I had made a critical error until the next day.
Disappointment.
Instead of inspiring her she immediately looked at her inability to stay dry as failure. I told her it was okay and that all Daddy wanted to do was help her remember to go potty when she woke up. I should have realized her little active brain had been and would be churning on this all day and by the next morning things got much worse.
Crying.
You would think after almost 20 years of raising children one could figure out the inability to cope with events leads to crying. For whatever reason I forget crying is usually genuine and almost always birthed by a set of overwhelming circumstances. You wold think I would know this, but I don’t. Again I comforted my little girl and told her the logical and well though out deductive rationale for this impossible scenario I had thrust upon her three-year old mind. I knew my intentions and since they were good she could simply cope with the reality that deferred gratification is a virtue at three even though I have just started applying it at forty-two.
Lying.
This morning as I was getting ready to beat my body back into submission practicing my deferred gratification at the gym, Emily ran into my office exclaiming she had stayed dry. I probably should have known something was up in that the only thing she had on was her night-shirt but I made a bid deal out of her accomplishment. I told her to go potty and when she finished in the bathroom, she started complaining about her foot. Apparently she stepped on something which immediately spiraled down into a full-blown meltdown as she exclaimed how she could never run fast again.
I grabbed a tweezers and sat on her bed and expertly located the sliver in her toe. After debating for several minutes I convinced her the short-term pain would be better for her in the long run. Mommy sat down and distracted her and the sliver was quickly out. Excited about my ability to make things better I shared with Mom that Emily stayed dry all night.
Nervous laughter.
My wife is smart. Living with someone for two decades creates this cool telepathy language thing and by the look I was given I realized that something was wrong. More nervous laughter from the three-year old and our eyes landed on the wet diaper in the middle of the floor. “Really?” asked Julie to the increasingly fidgety laughing eye batting hand rubbing little girl between us. “You stayed dry all night?”
Shame.
There are many snapshot moments I have as a parent. Most of those are great but sadly some get framed with regret. This had the potential for one of those moments but we both handled it expertly and mitigated a historically heavy-handed response that Emily’s siblings received.
Faced with a no-win situation our daughter had learned to change the rules to help her desired outcome. We explained why lying is wrong and warned her not to do it again but I had to come up with a plan B to help her. There is a point where setting our children up for success can actually set our children up to fail. I had inadvertently set the bar so high that the only way for Emily to reach it was to stand on a lie.
Retreat.
So the potty training reward system has slowly gone away. Emily is still wetting at night but we know it is not for lack of trying to stay dry. We let our brilliant little thinker take a step back compared to other children her age in this area and we will probably see results similar to her sister in that regard.
A couple more years of pull-ups at night is a small price to pay to keep our little one a little one a little longer.