Potty training is hard, people. Just ask the many parents who are deep in the trenches as we speak. So I get where one woman was coming from when she and her husband decided that everyone in their family was going to announce every time they successfully made it to the potty to encourage their 2-year-old. But I bet she sure wishes she hadn't been sticking quite so closely to the plan on the same day that her husband happened to be in a video meeting. Cue the womp, womp, womps, people. We've got a prime-o embarrassing mom moment on our hands!
Fresh off of one of the most embarrassing moments of her life, the mom did the right thing -- she took to the internet.
The mom joked on the Today I F—ed Up subreddit that after her goof she was "dead" — "so this is maybe my ghost posting for me."
Like many parents, the OP and her husband are using their stay-at-home time to potty train their 2-year-old girl.
And were hoping to use positive reinforcement to get their toddler interested in the potty.
"We (myself, husband, and 5-year-old) have been proudly announcing when we do our business, and then promptly giving each other high fives and cheers, etc," she explained.
The practice has definitely piqued her toddler's interest.
"Each time we tell her, 'just wait until you do it, you can get all the cheers!'" the mom explained.
So the mom didn't even hesitate to declare victory recently.
After the mom finished taking the kids to the pool, she proudly ran downstairs "and proclaim[ed] in a loud reaches-the-back-of-the-room kind of voice, 'I WENT POOPY ON THE POTTY!!!!!'"
And then — dead silence. No applause. No cheers. No parade in her honor.
"I look at my family staring back at me with wide eyes," she continued.
Again, she was confused. Why was everyone acting so weird?
"A heartbeat later, I realize my husband is on a conference call that is both unmuted and on speaker," she wrote. " And they've just heard my grand announcement."
Now if it was just a few people on his immediate team, that would be one thing.
But oh, no, no. It could never be that easy.
"It's a big conference call with many supervisors across different sites who were discussing some upcoming program changes. Yep," she wrote.
"'OMG are you on a CONFERENCE CALL?!' I shouted in the same loud voice, wishing the floor would just swallow me up right there," she continued.
But at least one person was excited for her news.
"'Yay, mommy went poopy!' cheers [toddler] also very loudly," she added.
"I'm not sure what happened next because I died," she wrote. "RIP me and I'm not going to any Christmas party ever again now."
Most people agreed -- mom had nothing to feel bad about.
"As embarrassing as it may seem, if anyone on the conference call were to judge or seem disgruntled by the announcement, have probably never been parents or remembered what it was like with younger siblings or family members," one commenter wrote. "You were being a parent and helping your youngin' to grow into an adult."
"Is it weird I don't think that's bad?" someone else wrote it. "I think it's cute and humanizes your husband having to work at home with his family. Nothing to be embarrassed about."
While a third commenter was prepared to ask the real questions: "Good job on the poop, though. High five! Wait, did you wash your hands?"
Luckily, there seems to be no real harm done.
Later in the thread, the mom wrote that there were certainly a few "snickers and giggles."
But then everyone moved on.
"The coworkers he knew personally were instant messaging him things like 'congrats' and 'way to go' and stuff," she wrote. "Some even send those little meme cards you can do in Microsoft Teams. My husband muted himself after [toddler's] response and also died laughing."
Yes, it was definitely embarrassing, but we're pretty proud of the OP for making the best of a sh-tty situation.
