Toddler Angst

My almost-four-year-old has the distinct brand of over-the-top stubbornness that could only have been inherited from her father. She also exhibits the interesting trait of the intelligent child who maybe lacks a little motivation. She didn't walk until well after a year old and simply seemed to prefer being carried. I guess it didn't help that my mother-in-law and the Manny actually did carry her everywhere. But she has a great vocabulary and what I think are pretty advanced verbal skills. Sometimes I refer to her as "The Evil Genius" because of her advanced knowledge of sneakiness and The Art of Making Your Older Sister Cry.

So for months we've been trying to convince her to potty train. She actually can go potty on a regular basis and has done so for days at a time. After that, she'll start going in her Pull-Ups (or her pants if we've fallen for the idea of alleged potty training...again) and attribute it to being "too busy" to stop what she was doing and go to the bathroom. She's wanted to go to pre-school for a long time so we've even used that as an incentive. It's touchy, because, as a psychology major, I'm paranoid that we're going to give her "issues" about the whole thing and then her little psyche will be permanently damaged. (Heh. Yeah, horray for my ability to be rational.) But she's even gone to pre-school for about seven days before her motivation wore off.

Anyway, she just used "I gotta go potttyyyy" as an excuse to get out of her bed for a minute. She's in the bathroom now, down the hallway, and I can hear her yelling, from the toilet I'm sure. She's shouting...(and read this phonetically)..."I don't cure if I don't go to pee-school! I don't cure!! I don't wanna go to pee-school anywayyy." Ironic, huh? "Pee"-school.

Do you think we can find a Kindergarten that takes kids in Pull-Ups? Maybe she'll be on the Jeopardy teen tournament one day and her cute story will be how she's so full-o-info because she was home schooled...because she didn't potty train until she was 11.