I hate potty training and I hope I can vent a little to the void or anyone who can throw some potty my way

So just as a preface, my son just turned three in June and the doctors gave us a referral because our son is speech delayed. He understands when I say daddy a kiss or go kiss mommy or go grab me the green magnet tile or put that down. He just doesn’t wanna talk when he doesn’t feel like it. He says mommy, daddy, can say his letters and numbers and colors and some Disney characters just not complete sentences. We do have an appointment it’s in February and the reason why it’s that far out is because our area is a Dr desert essentially. We did some type of speech therapy when he was 1-2 with very little success and we got a teacher from the local school to come once a week which has better results for our son.

Well one a suggestion was put our son in the daycare/preschool and maybe he’ll shadow other people and talk more but one of the rules was our son has to be potty trained so prior to him turning three. My wife and I did potty training maybe five times each time we tried it was a week long effort and it was stressful for both of us. By the seventh day and I don’t know how my wife felt but there were times when I did not want to come home to her and my son because I knew it was just gonna be him holding it in and then the moment he gets off the little potty training toilet he would just piss on the carpet, piss on the couch, piss on his toys and our whole house with smell like that Bissell flowery smell everywhere. I wasn’t stressed out at my wife or my son but I was stressed out because we put so much pressure on ourselves to get our son potty trained.

And then come to find out the daycare place said that our son can be placed in the 2.5 y/o group and they help with potty training but they want to see our son be able to pull up his shorts and stuff like that. I guess they help with pull up diaper changes to a degree. So when we found that out that’s when we stopped putting so much pressure on us to potty train our son when he clearly wasn’t ready those other 5 times. We did the naked way, then the cotton underwear where you can feel it. We did the timer way, every 10 minutes the first time then 15 minutes because every 10 minutes was too much, then 20 minutes and our son would cry because the timer would be a Pavlov bell to him after a couple days and that got me upset because after the 3rd day I started asking myself what are we doing here exactly??? Our son gave no worries about ANY of it. I still have that sticker chart where he successfully pee peed into the toilet 17 times in that week and just wet the carpet the other 28 times and dropped little poop rolls on the carpet 14 times. Candy trick didn’t work and cheering him on and making it a celebration became torture for my wife and I when that timer hit 10 minutes. Now all these attempts were before he turned 3 and before we visited the daycare Baptist place in March.

When I told my family about it, my sisters told me that I was between 3 to 4 before I finally understood potty training and I work in a medical office where I get to talk to 8 to 10 other mom/coworkers and they also said the same thing that their sons took a little longer to potty train, and even when they got to understand the potty training, there were still plenty of accidents. I still remember one of my coworkers saying that her daughter was playing soccer and after the soccer game was over and she was 4 at the time she probably announced that she peed her pants. So even though I want my son to get potty trained part of me feels like OK I can’t rush this if my son‘s not ready.

This time around my wife is saying let’s just work on getting our son to say potty and just focus on getting him to notice when he’s wet. Let’s just work on getting him to announce peeing part. That seems like a more reasonable goal but the other 4 to 5 times of training has given me PTSD and has been getting me sweaty.

Sorry for the lengthy venting.