Ava knows right from wrong. And I think we (or I, at least) sometimes under estimate how smart she is even at age two. Like it's crazy how manipulative Ava can be!

Kids: The Masters of Manipulation -- The Overwhelmed Mommy Blogger

If you've been following us and our potty training journey for a while now, you know that Ava's picked up potty training with ease but this also comes with so much manipulation and for me, it's hard to decipher when she's lying or telling the truth. Before bed, her thing is to tell us she needs to pee or poo. So of course, we put her on the potty and let her do her thing. And every single time, she says, "A bit more" when we ask her if she's all done, even if she's already gone.

So here we are the other night, sitting on the bathroom floor for 20 minutes because she insists that she has "a bit more poo poo." At this point, we're over it. Completely over it. She's already gone poop twice that day (which is more than usual) so we take her off, she screams and yells and we put her in her crib, thinking she will just fall asleep like usual. Because of course, she's just manipulating us, right?

Nope.

10 minutes later she yells, "mama poo poo in crib" and I go over and you guessed it, she pooped in her pants. Let me tell you, I felt TERRIBLE. Like in the moment, I felt like the worst mom in the entire world. I was literally heartbroken. I hugged her and told her I was sorry and told her it's okay as she bawled her eyes out thinking she did something wrong. My child was telling me she needed to go and here I am forcing her to go poop in her pants because I didn't believe her.

Pretty terrible, right?

But how would I know? How can I tell what's the truth and what isn't?

I very well could've sat there for two hours and let her walk all over me, telling me she she needed to go but really, just wanting to delay her bed time. So how do I know? Tell me, how do I tell the difference between manipulation and truth?