By Hannah Pasternak
Updated September 16, 2026
This is the first installment in Motherly’s new series, Can I Be Honest?, where mothers share the fears, fails, and triumphs we are often afraid to post in the group chat. Because being a parent is hard work, but it becomes significantly more manageable when we can talk about it openly.
I genuinely figured I could potty train my daughter in three days flat, primarily because this was the definitive timeline promised by my Instagram algorithm. For weeks, my social media feed had been carefully curated to serve up well-designed carousels and talking-head Reels delivering a very straightforward message: If the child is ready, strip off the diaper and bring her to the potty at regular intervals. There should be no shame associated with accidents, and undergarments should be strictly banned for the first two days. By day three, the theory goes, parents are supposedly released from the confines of their houses, and their newly trained children can enter the outside world wearing pants, but going commando. Yes, according to the digital consensus, you can achieve complete mastery in just three days.
It seemed simple enough on paper, so on the Thursday before the July Fourth holiday, my family dove right into the experiment.
This Isn’t Your Mother’s Potty Training Manual
I have vague, distant memories of an ad-hoc sticker chart my own mother constructed to potty train my siblings and me during childhood; however, I have absolutely no memory of potty training being any sort of monumental, high-stakes life event. As far as my recollection serves, learning to use the toilet just kind of happened in the quiet background of everything else going on in our lives, from birthday parties and dance classes to routine family dinners. When I recently fact-checked this historical record with my mother, she confirmed that she had read zero manuals and followed no specific methodology.
“We didn’t have the internet or access to information like you do now,” she recalled, noting that she never purchased a single instructional book.
The wealth of information we possess today—to which she was referring—is staggering, and it extends far past the high-engagement posts I routinely encounter on social media. There are shelves full of parenting bestsellers, such as the ultra-popular Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Get It Right, alongside virtual courses available for purchase from prominent parenting thought leaders like Big Little Feelings and Dr. Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside platform.
And that just scratches the surface of informed parenting resources dedicated solely to potty training. There are digital courses designed to teach you how to be an emotionally attuned parent, classes aimed at making your child a better toddler, smart socks capable of tracking your child’s heart rate, baby monitors that calculate the precise efficiency of your infant’s sleep cycles, and even artificial intelligence-powered house managers designed to notify you precisely when your household is running low on toilet paper.
All of this digital infrastructure is ostensibly meant to make our daily lives easier and better, and I do not doubt that in some capacity, for some families, it actually does. But I am already profoundly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks involved in balancing my professional career and everyday life. Furthermore, I am deeply protective of maintaining some fundamental sense of self-preservation. On most days—except for those rare, magical moments where I feel a sudden burst of Nanny McPhee-style energy beneath my wings—the absolute last thing I want to do is spend even more precious time analyzing data, reviewing optimization strategies, or second-guessing my approach to basic childhood milestones like potty training.
Letting It All Hang Out
And so, we chose to strip off the diaper and go entirely blind into the process: no purchased courses, no downloaded PDFs, no parenting books, and no modern digital safety nets. It felt entirely in step with the relaxed, low-tech, low-fuss parenting ethos I have largely embraced since my daughter was born. It is an approach characterized by clear rules and healthy restrictions, but with significantly less overcorrection and anxiety. It offers a much-needed escape route from sifting through an endless mountain of digital advice, serving as a soft place to land on the days when I simply do not possess the emotional bandwidth to be the hyper-optimized parent I might be if I decided to read every available guide.
The first three days of the experiment were an absolute emotional rollercoaster. The victories felt monumental—such as a sudden crotch grab followed by a concerned, cautionary Mama…—while the failures felt like direct blows to my ego, exemplified by a completely nonchalant stream of urine landing squarely on the kitchen floor. One second, I felt like I was sitting proudly on top of the world, watching my toddler master such an incredible, fundamental bodily function. The next second, I was furiously kicking myself for not being sufficiently diligent with the kitchen timer, or for getting too lax when another family member, like my husband or my visiting mother, was on active duty patrol. I was thoroughly exhausted, intensely stressed, but paradoxically proud.
On day four of our potty training journey—marking the very first time we ventured outside the safety of our home—things quickly unraveled. My daughter flat-out refused to sit on any public toilet and eventually released a steady, unimpeded stream of urine straight down her own leg while visiting a friend’s house. We packed up our belongings and headed straight back home, our toddler completely pants-less and my own confidence thoroughly defeated.
I felt like an absolute failure. My own mother watched me process the agony in real-time, and I felt a childish urge to stomp my feet on the floor. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way, I wanted to scream at the empty air. The internet promised it was supposed to be a neat, tidy, three-days-and-done miracle.
That was the moment of realization. I had fallen squarely into the psychological trap, despite never having purchased a single copy of Oh Crap. I had secretly believed it was entirely possible to program my daughter’s biological timeline into a strict three-day window, no ifs, ands, or buts. Wasn’t that precisely the rigid, prescriptive concept I had originally set out to reject?
Consequently, we made the executive decision to call it quits. I had no desire to send my daughter back to daycare diaper-less while she remained a prime candidate to spring a leak at any unpredictable moment, and it was emotionally painful to watch her develop a creeping, palpable anxiety surrounding the simple act of having a bowel movement.
What I Learned From Our Potty Training Fail
Looking back, there are countless things I could have done differently. I could have adopted an alternative approach often utilized in previous decades, introducing the concept gradually by removing the diaper exclusively at home while keeping it securely fastened during public outings to lower the overall stakes. I could have actually purchased the instructional PDFs or read the bestselling literature, which might have given us a more predictable framework during those turbulent initial three days. I could have shadowed my daughter with a portable potty for a week or more, stubbornly riding out the process without succumbing to frustration—though I was also eight months pregnant at the time, operating with a severely limited capacity for processing daily emotions rationally. Alternatively, I could simply wait and try again whenever she demonstrates a genuine, intrinsic readiness to tackle the milestone on her own.
Of course, none of these options represents a singular, universally perfect path. Ultimately, modern parents are forced to pick the strategy that feels most sustainable for their unique household, which is perhaps the hippest parenting style of them all.
Some time after our failed attempt, close friends of ours with a daughter the exact same age decided to take the plunge. They wisely chose not to leave their house for an entire week. They also employ a nanny, which undeniably makes the whole logistical endeavor considerably easier, and their daughter is naturally content spending a warm summer day indoors, whereas mine fiercely demands outdoor adventures.
We eventually crossed paths with them at a neighborhood playground on their ninth day of training, where they had lugged along a specialized travel potty. It was their very first park excursion since starting. They reported that their daughter still hadn’t actually used the public restroom, but at least she was successfully holding her bladder. This could have been us if we had just stuck it out, I caught myself thinking.
Another friend mentioned that her daughter, also a peer of mine, mastered the fundamentals in three days flat—only for the child to suddenly begin having accidents all over the house a month later. Once again, the familiar internal chorus echoed in my mind: This could have been us. But deep down, did I actually want it to be?
Today, if you were wondering, my daughter still expresses little to no interest in using the potty. However, she has noticeably improved her verbal communication regarding her bodily needs, meaning a renewed attempt on the horizon is entirely possible. I no longer view our initial experiment as a failure. Instead, we plan to revisit the process when the cooler weather arrives—or sooner, if she explicitly requests it.
Until then, I have learned a valuable lesson or two about relinquishing perfectionism, and I am genuinely looking forward to September, when the three of us can proudly match in our respective diapers: my toddler, my newborn, and me.
