Anne Rogers wrote:

My ped shared that
there are a few things, and I think there were 4, even though I can
only remember 3, that we cannot control--sleeping, eating, and going
potty.

I'm really not convinced, I mean you can't control whether you have a
child for whom is naturally easy to fall asleep and to stay asleep or
one for whom it is the complete opposite - so you can't suddenly make a
child who's not that way inclined sleep 12 hours each night, but you can
optimise their sleep, by insuring you are getting the right time for
bedtime, providing a good environment for sleep, reacting appropriately
if they wake at night, etc.

The same goes with potty training, you can't change the point in time at
which a child will have the physical ability to do it, but you can
respond quite differently to the early signs they are getting there
physically and it's highly likely they will affect the long term
progress of potty training.

I don't think that's what that means. It is perfectly possible if you
go about it right to influence the child to eat, sleep and potty. But
if you make a fight out of it, and the child figures out that he
doesn't HAVE to do it just because you say so, then you are SOL. He
can starve himself or impact his intestines just because he doesn't
want to do what you say. So these areas are ones in which you do NOT
want to make a contest of wills out of it. It's like the old saying
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."

Children are smarter than you might think. My sister used to read
Parents Magazine so she could figure out what ploys my mom got out of
it to try on us.