Potty Training Sucks
There is nothing I dread more than potty training my children. It never goes smoothly for me and all too often ends in a disgusting mess. For instance, I took my son to the bathroom the other day. He pee-pees in the potty. I do my obligatory happy dance and congratulations. Then he stands up, takes a crap on the floor and promptly says “What the hell!?!” I know, right? On a side note, he does not go around cursing all the time nor do I excuse it. He’s heard it a few times and decided that he will forever utter this phrase (at strangely appropriate times), to my annoyance. But I digress. Back to how sucky potty training is.
It doesn’t help when you have other people tell you how their kids were potty trained at 12 months old or in a single weekend. Yeah, that makes me feel loads better. My daughter was almost 3 before she was completely out of diapers. I couldn’t get her to stop leaving me nice “presents” at night. I bribed. I cried. I prayed to the pee and poop gods. We watched videos and read books. And it still took forever. Obviously, it ended well. But it forever tainted my views on the potty training experience.
And now, here I am again with my 2-year-old toddler. Except this time I’m dealing with a boy. And he’s packing something I have no idea what to do with or how to control. A wee-wee. A wild hose. A penis. It frightens me. He sits on the potty and he’s never poised in the right position. That “hose” is aimed right for me and I know bad things are going to happen.
Every time I put him on the potty, I try to get him in a downward lean. But it often ends with pee sprouting forth in a perfect rainbow formation and onto the floor. If I were judging a peeing competition, I’d definitely give him a 10. And what good is the guard thing on the potty chair anyway? It really needs to be chest high to be of any use. I initially tried to get him to push his penis down to prevent the spraying. But then, as boys do, he will just start playing with it and things get seriously sidetracked. This is my life now. #1, #2 and the positions of wee-wees. That might make a great title for a future book on this subject.
Although he’s been peeing on the potty off and on, getting my toddler to poop has been a struggle. The one time he did go #2 in his potty, he was horrified. He couldn’t believe such a scary looking thing came out of him. He looked, slowly backed away and kept saying “Ew!” That was the one and only time he did it. But he’s more than happy to sit in it. Go figure. Strangely enough, his favorite book right now is Everyone Poops. It’s like his daily therapy session, on the road to self-acceptance.
But supposedly, there is a quick fix. I’ve read about this “potty train your kid in a weekend” method. It involves keeping your child naked from the waist down for 3 days and having the potty within view at all times. You are instructed to give them plenty of drinks and salty snacks to encourage peeing. And of course have supplies on hand to clean up messes. If you go out, you’re supposed to send them out with pants but no diapers. Um, what? This kid will pee and poop anywhere! Maybe if I had hardwood floors, but what about my carpet? And go out in public with a ticking time bomb in my car? I’m getting the shakes just thinking about it.
I’m not knocking the 3-day method. It must be successful for lots of people or it wouldn’t be so popular. But the stress of trying to keep track of a naked toddler for 3 whole days is just too scary for me right now. I fear my house wouldn’t survive the trauma. Or maybe I wouldn’t. So for now, I will continue to read books, run to the potty a dozen times a day and know that one day my son will be wearing his big boy underpants sitting unopened in his room. Until then, I will remind myself not to stress too much and to remember that this too shall pass. Now if you will excuse me, I am being summoned for today’s reading of Everyone Poops.
