Potty Talk
by
“Mom,” Sun sings as she steps out of the bathroom, clean and damp. Her mother lay in her darkened room too tired to respond. “Mom!” Sun happily runs through the rooms, seeking. Still, her mother stays quiet. “Mommy,” Sun insists as she leaves the front rooms, diligent in her search. “Mommy. . . ” Methodically, Sun reaches her mother’s room. Her mother smiles and opens her arms; Sun enters the embrace, never doubting her mother was steps away all along.
* * *
Potty training makes no sense. How does a child learn how to listen to her body as to WHEN she needs to potty based on being placed on the potty every, say, 10 minutes? Just because she in fact does sit on the potty when the moment strikes and she thus does pee in the potty, how does that translate itself in her head that the moments leading up to that are what she has to learn to feel next time?
For Sun, it’s not much different than other children. She makes progress, then regresses. But it’s two steps forward and one back. She should be fully out of diapers soon.
I hope this is the best story I’ll have to relay to her when she’s older:
Sun was practicing with no diaper–just a skirt. She came out of her playroom and explained that she “had spilled.” We cleaned her up and replaced her skirt, socks and shoes. She returned to her playroom. “Poopies. Gross!” She exclaimed. “What?” I asked, having checked where she had stood after her “spill.” “The cat pooped!” she explained. And there it was–three feet from where I thought she’d spilled. A poopie. But clearly not from the cat.
Three years old and blaming smelly accidents on the innocent, old cat without as much as batting an eyelash.
Ack, she’s so cute! Just don’t be that mom that takes pics of her child’s first poo by herself. And if you are, um….congrats!
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Jane, no, NOT taking pics. Not me, anyway. Sun got a hold of my camera. How do I know? About 10 pics of the toilet from the height of a three-year old. The final pic? Her poopies in the toilet. We’ve always flushed her poopies, even before potty training. The pic is of the contents of one of her diapers having been dumped. Yeah, the same kid that now screams, “Poopies! Gross!”
It makes perfect sense. By putting her on the toilet at regular time intervals she starts to learn the cues of when she needs to go to the potty. Also, she learns that the toilet is not a scary or nervous place. IT is no big deal. It gets in the habit of going to the toilet instead of in her pants. Because let’s face it, it is much easier to just let loose in your pants then to get up, stop playing and go to the toilet.
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I figured it out! I’ve been assuming that children need to learn to “hold it in”–that they pee without thinking and so that potty training was teaching them to STOP. But this morning, when Sun held her pee all night and peed in the potty, I dawned on me that her “default” is to hold it in. That what we are training a child to do is decide WHEN to stop holding it. Earth shattering moment, I swear. So, knowing THAT, it DOES make sense about putting them on potty–because even if just for a moment, a child is holding it in. And if you get them on the potty at the right time, they let go before they get too strong an urge.
In other words, SUN HAS PEED IN THE POTTY CONSISTENTLY FOR OVER 24 HOURS! SHE’S POTTY TRAINED!!!!