potty training woes

Parenting can sometimes feel like something of an uphill battle when it comes to training your children to become adults and more specifically to be the men and women God created them to be... to reach their fullest potential with character, integrity, and grace. When they are really young (like mine), your accomplishments towards these end goals are what might feel like small victories in development. For example, we are working on feeding by themselves, picking up toys when asked, sharing, getting dressed without help, and potty training. And while you work on the developmental skills, you do your best to instill quality of character in your children such as kindness, gentleness, peace, love, and so on. (We focus on the Fruits of the Spirit found in Ephesians) Sometimes you start aiming for a developmental goal and discover that your child catches on immediately and you decide that he/she must hold a certain level of brilliance. Your pride swells and you might even go so far as to think that you must be doing something right as a parent. Other times, it takes them a little longer to grasp a certain concept and it can be frustrating... but you just kind of blow it off and delight in the quirkiness of your child. And then there are times when you are sure that they are deliberately resisting the attempt to accomplish a certain goal for the pure and distinct purpose of driving you to the brink of insanity. And this is where I find myself right now with Seth. We have been working on potty training for about 6 months now. I waited until he was really ready. I did not push him because I didn't want to engage in a battle of the wills over this issue. One day, he decided to do it and peed in the potty consistently with nearly zero accidents for 2 months. And then he just stopped. He won't tell me when he has to go potty and always prefers to go in his pants. I remind him to go to the potty regularly and he screams and melts down. We were totally and completely confused by this until this last weekend. I finally realized that the issue was that he is terrified to put down his toys in fear that Lilah will get them. He has been seriously struggling with sharing lately too. So, in short... he won't potty train and it's because he is going through an incredibly selfish phase. Basically, I am a failure at both potty training and instilling a sharing spirit in my son. Two key areas of parenting. And I think he really is trying to drive me crazy. I can see the gleam in his eye and the curl of his mouth when he tells me he peed in his pants. This may all sound very dramatic, but I am at the brink of madness with 2 kids in diapers and another diaper baby coming soon. Help!