We tried to potty train Poppy a few months ago using the method that my mother-in-law used on two of her three children and on our niece. The book she used is called “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day” by Nathan Azrin. The basic premise calls for a pottying doll to show the child the general concept. Once they get what you’re trying to accomplish, you ply the child with whatever beverages and snacks they love the most and have a frantic afternoon of running to and from the potty. And in just hours, your child is potty trained.

With the help of copious amounts of M&Ms, my mother-in-law’s children were potty trained by naptime. Sophie took a bit longer, but she was also trained at 18 months — pretty darned early and a fact in which Sophie takes a considerable amount of pride. We were enthusiastic and had no doubt that Poppy would have similar success.

Alas, there was no joy in Mudville.

That day was terrible. It seems that Poppy is impervious to bribery. She doesn’t like sweets at all, and she was no less than blase at the prospect of an all-you-can-eat Goldfish and potato chip buffet. She was also terrified of the potty itself, which blared forth a faux flushing noise when she accidentally touched the faux flusher. That didn’t help matters.

I ended up upstairs, crying on the landing. Rockford bravely soldiered on for a few hours, his fortitude rewarded by many, many pairs of urine-soaked training pants. After a full afternoon of torture, we gave up and returned to the diapers.

My mother-in-law was surprised to learn that our failure had been so very complete. She stuck by the method and offered to try to train Poppy herself. I was happy to agree to that plan. Which brings us to this week.

Rockford’s parents came over on Tuesday afternoon. Genia, my mother-in-law, had reread the book and was ready to train. On Wednesday morning, my father-in-law and I left for a very exciting few hours scouring the local Sanford & Sons. And Genia went up against the Iron Will of the Poppy.

It took her two hours to get Poppy to sit on the potty. Things went a bit more smoothly from there, but she wasn’t trained by nap time. There was no nap time. The training went on and on and on until bedtime. At which time Poppy was happy to sit on the potty and occasionally even tinkled in the potty. But she wasn’t making an effort to get there when the need arose, which is a pretty important part of the potty process.

Yesterday, the in-laws stayed until I’d had a chance to shower and get ready to face the day. We started the training again at about 9:30am. At 10pm, I put my exhausted, battle-weary girl to bed and then went to bed myself.

It was a harrowing day. I spent most of it sitting in the bathroom floor, trying to get Poppy to “pee-pee in the potty.” When I wasn’t in the bathroom, I was washing wet training pants or trying not to cry (or both) while Poppy said, “Is Mommy OK?” She spent most of it holding the pee-pee until we left the bathroom, then crying when I went through the list of people who don’t like wet pants (one of the tenets of the method).

Rockford, who had been out of town since Tuesday, got home around 11. I was nearly asleep when he got home. When I tried to tell him about our day, I lost it. The poor guy had been on the road for almost 7 hours, and I met him with a nuclear meltdown.

Poppy hasn’t worn a diaper since Wednesday morning. She has had far more accidents than successes. But eventually, we’ll get there. I don’t want to say that the potty-training-in-one-day method is bunk (obviously, it worked on Rockford), but I can say that it hasn’t been a great success for us. According to the book, the average child in their tests was trained in 5 hours. The fastest was finished in 30 minutes, while the longest any child took was 14 hours. We nearly surpassed that yesterday alone.

Pi still hasn’t gone into the bathroom without prompting. The closest she’s come was this morning, when she wet her pants and then told me she needed to “pee-pee in the potty.” But she’s only had one “wet pants” episode today. The only other time she’s gone, she was sitting on the potty already and just couldn’t hold it any longer.

I’m still frustrated, but at least I haven’t wanted to punch Nathan Azrin in the face today.