A complete and total loss....

I am beginning to feel like a bit of a failure as mother. Nicholas is exactly three years, eight months, and nine days old as of today. He has YET to pee on the potty. I am at a loss as to what to do with the child. His twin sister decided to pee on the potty the day she turned 3 years old with little intervention from us and hasn’t looked back since. Nicholas, on the other hand, has no desire whatsoever. We have tried everything we can possibly think of. We have tried the bribery tactic….a jar of M&M’s in the bathroom as a reward. We have tried appealing to the boy in him…..cheerios in the toilet. Apparently boys are supposed to like target practice? We have tried letting him pee in the tub…a suggestion from our pediatrician. We have tried pull-ups…basically diapers, so what’s the point?? We have tried reading all of the potty books to him. We have read about Joshua and his shiny new potty. We have read about Ben and his big boy underwear. We have read every word of every book out there. We have tried the all-or-nothing tactic….just putting him in underwear and dealing with the consequences. As a matter of fact, we tried this tactic just yesterday. He peed on the floor three times in the matter of an hour and half. Eventually, he was in tears, crying that he wasn’t ready for underwear. His exact words were, “Mommy, I don’t think I need to be in underwear right now.” He was begging me for a diaper. I couldn’t take it any longer. He looked so sad and so disgusted with himself. I couldn’t stand seeing my baby in tears. I couldn’t stand him feeling like a failure for another moment. So I put a diaper on him. We had been sitting on the toilet for quite a while “trying”. The minute I put the diaper on him, he immediately relaxed and peed. He grinned from ear to ear and said “Mommy…look…there WAS pee in my penny!”

So what do I do? Do I continue to torture my child by forcing the potty on him? Is it possible that he is just not ready…at almost four years old?!? I have the feeling that if I could get him to pee on the potty once….just one time…he would see that he CAN do it and we would be done. How do you get a child who is opposed to the potty with every fiber of his being to just do it? As a parent, I have been frustrated and fatigued. I have been annoyed and alarmed. I have been overwhelmed and underappreciated. I have not, however, been at a complete and total loss.......until now.