Why do I even try?

So far, there are two parenting of toddler challenges that severely try my patience. Excuse me while I vent for a moment. First - Potty traing. Oona refuses to go for me. There is some sort of power struggle or something there. I so desparately want her to be potty trained. We've tried many different things and all I get is "no." She'll go for her teachers at school. But for some reason she won't go at home. Praise doesn't work. Suggestions don't work. Bribery doesn't work. I don't think telling her she has to sit on the potty chair until she goes would work either. She would just hold it and I would be bald from tearing all my hair out. Making her wear soiled underwear wouldn't work either because I would have to hold and wrestle her until the requisite time was up.

Second - napping. Why do I even try to get Oona down for a nap? Except that she's entirely way too cranky by dinner time and the other night she fell asleep before dinner and when she woke up she was super duper cranky. I get so infuriated, though, putting in all the effort to get her to go to sleep - the same techniques that have worked previously and the only ones that I've tried that were at all effective - and then she refuses to sleep even though it is so clearly obviously that she is tired and needs a nap. A week or so ago, I decided to give up. But then she surprised me and fell asleep several days in a row with super long naps. So I thought to myself, well, then I should at least try to get her down for a nap. I'm thinking now, that since it reduces me to grinding my teeth and pulling my hair and biting my clothing, that I should go back to giving up. I just won't have much sympathy for her when she's crying and cranky come 5 o'clock.

Luckily, I don't have super picky eaters. I think that would be the third thing.

We can't force them to pee or poop when we want them to and where we want them to. We also can't force them to fall asleep when and where we think they should. And you can't force them to eat something. I've had moments of gagging and wretching and tears at the table from older children and it is not pleasant. Oh, the frustrations!

Teenager parenting challenges that really get me are talking back, the teenager feeling the need to teach the parent a lesson, the parent being the stupidest person ever because teenagers know everything. You know - boundary issues. Teenagers and toddlers together? You get a lot of "You're not going to tell ME what to do!" You wanna bet? There are consequences.