Mother Guilt

I remember expressing sadness to my Mother once about feeling remorse regarding something trivial I had done or not done when Elsbeth was a baby. She told me, Jill there will be plenty of things to really feel guilty about as a Mother, so seriously, don't sweat the small stuff. I thought that was pretty sage advice and I have tried to keep that philosophy in perspective as a parent and remind myself, that despite my attempts at being the perfect person, I am still just a mere mortal. So I haven't lost much sleep over the minor issues, but there are those times that I just can't shake and I am left wondering if I have done more harm than good in certain instances.

I spanked my daughter today for peeing on the floor. There, I said it. I didn't do it out of anger, I didn't even do it hard enough to make her cry, but I still felt bad afterwards. We've been working on potty training for several months now and just about every time she has it down pat, we have had to travel and she regresses back to square one. Public potty performance anxiety I guess you could call it. I always said I didn't want two children in diapers and yet here I am.

The tipping point to move exclusively to underwear came when I asked her if she needed to use the restroom and she said that no, she'd rather just go in her diaper which she promptly did. In my opinion that's old enough to know better. So, yesterday I said that's the end of the diapers, you're going to wear underwear from now on and you're going to go in the toilet. And she did. All day. We were out car shopping all day yesterday and she didn't have one accident. I can only assume that she didn't because she didn't want to have an embarrassing moment of peeing in front of strangers. She even slept overnight in underwear without an accident.

Fast forward to today. She wakes up, we go straight to the toilet and she does her thing. I shower her with praise and she even gets a rolo. Throughout the day I've asked her if she needs to go to the bathroom and have even taken her in to sit on the toilet a couple of times with no success. Then she pees in her room. I explained to her that these were underwear and not diapers and that they wouldn't hold it in anymore. I told her she was big enough to use the toilet and that's what I wanted her to do from now on. But I did not punish her, it was an accident. Not too long after that we had another accident on the bathroom rug. No hard feelings, at least she was trying to make it in there. I delivered the same speech again and cleaned it up. Then there was her bedroom again. She didn't tell me, she just kept on going and tried to hide it. This time after I had cleaned it up I told her if she did it again she would get a spanking.

We're at the table for lunch and she's eating a piece of watermelon. I stand next to her to place her sandwich on her plate and feel something wet splatter my foot. I peed she says as she looks nonchalantly at me. So I did it. I spanked her for peeing on the floor for the fourth time today. She didn't even seem upset about it, but I immediately felt guilty. Why? What would you have done?