My Spiritual Epiphany from Toilet Training

A psych major in college, I knew all the right things to do to toilet train. I waited until my daughter was clearly ready, almost three, and really, really wanted to wear Big Girl Panties. There was also the incentive of keeping up with the Jessicas, since most of the girls in her nursery school wore them and she didn't want to be left out.

I tried only positive reinforcement, and made sure it was intermittent. We even had a little tabloid newspaper by the potty so she could be just like Daddy. But I didn't understand the spiritual principles under the psychological theories, so after a few months I was starting to wonder if my daughter was going to have to go from extralarge Pampers to extra small Depends.

Big Girl Panties were the Olympic Gold of our toilet training. She wanted the frilly, colorful ones so badly, almost as much as I wanted her to wear them. Yet, when I tried letting her wear them in return not peeing on the floor much, it didn't work. I tried negotiating them in return for sitting on the potty and producing, but that didn't prevent constant accidents, so we returned, dejected and defeated, to diapers.

One day I had a revelation as I went to wake her up in the morning. It came over me suddenly, and it was like I was taken over by a benign force. I was calm and positive as a force took me over and told her that she could wear underpants all the time if she just went to the bathroom and sat on the potty before each meal and at bedtime. "You just have to sit there for 1 minute, you don't have to pee. You can pee and poop all over the floor, if you want," I told her.

"You're kidding!" she said. I assured her I was not.

Excitedly, she jumped out of bed and ran to sit on the potty. When she returned she enthusiastically ordered, "Kid me again!"

She was dry from then on, even at night!

I thought that this was pretty amazing, but it was only years later I realized why it worked and the larger spiritual lesson it exemplified.

A number of spiritual teachers have offered the same insight in somewhat different ways. Byron Katie has a book titled Loving What Is, and her The Work is all about accepting situations and people, including yourself.

Eckhart Tolle says in The Power of Now, "Whatever the present moment contains -- accept it as if you had chosen it. Accept -- then act. Always work with it, not against it. Make the present your friend and ally, not your opponent. This will miraculously transform your whole life."

Of course, the accepting part is not easy. I really didn't accept cleaning up puddles all over the place. But once I really accepted them, they vanished.

Spiritual Guide Abraham says through Esther Hicks that we need to simply know what it is we want, trust we will get it, and it or the right actions to get it will come to us. However, if we want it too much, we are not trusting but grasping. We are actually pushing what we want away. "Nothing brings out the worst in another faster than your focusing on it."

I knew what I wanted, but had been wanting something negative -- no accidents -- rather than something positive. My epiphany was that I really trusted that the new approach was what was needed and I was willing to accept accidents. I was totally relaxed about it.

I had, without realizing it, focused on the negative--accidents--and children pick up what their parents focus on. I'd been using negative words "Don't pee on the floor" instead of "It's nicer when you pee in the potty."

By simply accepting the situation as it was and making it okay "You can pee on the floor," while offering a positive behavior and reward, sitting on the potty and wearing panties, the situation changed within minutes!

Of course, the trick is to really accept it. If only I had remembered the lesson my baby guru had taught me when she was an infant, I it would have been so much easier. But that's for my next blog post.