How to train your dragon, daughter and the dude

Don't complain they don't sit long enough on the potty. Soon, you will not be able to get them out of the bathroom.

Sleep training, eat-on-your-own training, brush-your-teeth training, let-go-off-the-pacifier training.... and then the mother of all trainings - potty training. There are just so many, many things parents have to train their kids for, so as to be acceptable fellow humans in this society that we have designed. I am well in the crux of that  battlefield with my first one now. And its EXHAUSTING. Its as if they have an infinite source of energy to fight any form of discipline you try to instill in them. When the well trained mind of an adult collides with the free thinking, "why" asking, rules hating mind of a young child, its the true battle of wits. After 2 months of failed attempts at bringing V to the potty, the most valuable lesson I have learnt is that - the person that needs to be trained is me. Not her, but me and my dragons. 

I need to learn to be patient. Prepare and then try again. Its a war out there and a disturbed, unfocused mind could never win. 
I have to be assertive, not scary. 
Let go of the accidents, focus on and celebrate the successful attempts.
Show by example. Always works. Kids would easily follow your actions than instructions. 
Have to get her to be around older kids. At home or play school. Kids love aping their "role models".
Finally, I will always remember my uncle's golden words - "She has your DNA. She is bound to be slow :) "

We rarely get trained to be parents, its an on job training that will go on for our lifetime. Its scary and quite understandable that sometimes we overdo it or over expect from ourselves because this is a tangible future that we are trying to nourish. Growing up around technology that has made everything smaller and quicker, kids come to us as puzzles with no cheat codes. And we get stuck. We are not used to not knowing what to do and it throws us off balance sometimes. (We being insufferable know-it-alls of varying degrees (thanks to the information revolution) doesn't help either). So, I have learnt that while I can threaten, cuddle, bribe, use stealth etc to bring them to a routine, I have no control over the results. 

I am going to train my dragons and demons to understand that, there will be stories about babies that got potty trained in 3 days, toddlers that gave up their pacifiers without their parents having to bat an eyelid, kids that eat all their greens and fruits on their own. But V is not one of them. She is the one who calls herself Dora and Amrit as Boots. The one that comes out of her comfort zone, leaving her dear papa behind to an entirely new world and settles herself well. The one that laughs out like a maniac at her mummini's silly faces. The one that never fusses to drink up even the bitterest of medicines. So, I will give her time. That is probably the most important thing my kids want from me - my time. 


Pic of the day - Drag on, dragon.

I might breathe fire, but I can be tamed :)

Pic taken on: 13 Dec 2012

P.S : Moms keep assuring me that this "training" effort doesn't have to be duplicated for A. It better be so!